The star in the West; a critical essay upon the works of Aleister Crowley

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THE STAR IN THE WEST

Fourth Edition

THE STAR IN THE WEST

A CRITICAL ESSAY UPON THE WORKS
OF ALEISTER CROWLEY

CAPT. J. F- C. FULLER

Hail, O Dionysus! Hail!

Winged Son of Semel^ !
Hailj O Hail ! The stars are pale.
Hidden the moonlight in the vale ;

Hidden the sunlight in the sea.

— Orpheus.

THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING CO., LTD.

NEW YORK: 3 EAST I4TH STREET
1907

1

CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.

CONTENTS

PAGE

Preface 3

Foreword 9

Chap. I. The Looking-Glass 15

II. The Virgin 49

III. The Harlot 109

IV. The Mother 123

V. The Old Bottle 145

VI. The Cup 167

VII. The New Wine 191

"Evoe! Evoe Ho! lacche! lacche!"

" If you hold by anything in the world more than
by reason, truth, and justice ; if your will be un-
certain and vacillating, either in good or evil; if
logic alarm you, or the naked truth make you
blush; if you are hurt when accepted errors are
assailed; condemn this work straight away; do
not read it; let it cease to exist for you; but at
the same time do not cry it down as dangerous."

Elifhas L£vi.

PREFACE

Non mihi subtilem calamura si cedat Apelles
Quae tibi sunt dotes, posse notare putem.

I. N.R.I.

AT first sight it may appear to the casual reader
of this essay, that the superscription on its cover
is both froward and perverse, and contrary to the sum
of human experience. This however I trust he will
find is not the case, and, as lanthe, will discover that
after the mystic union has been consummated, the
beautiful daughter of Ligdus and Telethusa was as
acceptable a young husband as ever wooed nymph on
the shaded slopes of Ida.

Much has been written concerning stars, both terres-
trial and celestial, and not a little regarding that cap-
ricious star which gleamed over the humble manger-
bed of the Son of Man.

Dark seas of blood have long since lapped that star
of the morning into the crimson oblivion of day, whose
empurpled strife has also rumbled into the distance as
the droning of some drowsy fire-finger on the sleeping
parchment of life, murmuring and moaning as the
wind-kissed mouth of a dreamy drum. Yet why should
we still listen for those subtle sounds which have
wearily danced out their slow saraband of sorrow.
Once Orphic they arose emparadising the cavernous

4 THE STAR IN THE WEST

depths of Hell, to sink into a dirge-like Niobe death-
chaunt,bewailing the thirteen children of their beget-
ting, rising once more in the song of Ligeia, enticing
men to her mire, and at length to die still-voiced as
the daughter of Dis, whose ghostly fingers sinking
clutch the frozen reeds of that slough in which she
had so long wallowed.

Long have we peered, crouching on the watch-tower
of our minds, through the darkness of ignorance lit
alone by the northern lights of folly, till our scorched
eyes falling as slags upon our hearts, a light celestial
hath arisen from out the eyeless sockets of Eternity.
A day-star, to flash forth into the west, winged and
wonderful. A Pharos of gleaming hope lighting our
way across the boisterous ocean of life to our haven of
eternal rest.

The fools and the faulty, the wise and the wizened
read and tremble before the might of its majesty, for
into its flaming horrent hath it woven and braided
the ashen locks of wisdom, the dyed curls of folly,
and all the glittering circlets of golden youth. All is
transcended, all is unified and transcendental ; neither
is there joy nor laughter, sorrow nor weeping, for all
is as a divine mastery of Truth and Knowledge to
those who worship the new-born God, like the Magi
of the East, with gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.
Above whose heptagonal cradle flashes the magic star
Lusanaher, that great star Cor Leonis, which heralds
and directs our reverent pilgrimage.

The Star has arisen; let us like men drop the silly
pretence of an ostrich-like self-delusion that the cindery
asteroid still lights our way; let us rather apply our
mental spectroscope to the analysis of its rays. There
shall we perchance discover the blending of all opposites

PREFACE 5

in one harmonious light; thence shall we travel to the
holy and humble house of the heart, wherein our God
is born, whose name is ineffable, a Crown of Glory,
exalted forever above the Balance of Righteousness
and Truth.

T. A.R.O.

As author of the following essay to you my readers,
I can but say with the four beasts of the Apocalypse:
" Come and See."

' ' Behold the Lion . . . hath prevailed to open the
Book and to loose the seven seals thereof." For until
now " No man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under
the earth, was able to open the Book, neither to look
thereon." Yet through the astrolabe of his mind and
in the alembic of his heart Aleister Crowley has opened
the book, breaking not only the first six seals, but the
seventh also. For those who read and understand,
the heavens shall depart as a scroll, and the stars shall
fall, and the mountains be moved out of their places;
and they shall become as kings in a new kingdom,
and be crowned with that Crown which passes Under-
standing.

I have attempted in the following seven chapters
to interpret the Book of the Seven Seals, and to paint
its splendour, as an artist would incarnadine his can-
vas with the red blood of his mistress, love-kissed from
the bloom of her crimson lips. I have not, as Samuel,
hacked and hewn Agag into pieces before the Lord in
Gilgal; but rather Elijah-like have called upon Wis-
dom and Understanding so that my sacrifice, and even
the wood and stone of the altar, and the water which
floweth about it, may be licked up by the fire of the
great Coronation.

6 THE STAR IN THE WEST

As another Ariadne I here offer this work to my
readers as a twisted clue of silk and hemp to guide
them safely through the labyrinthine mysteries of poetry
and magic, whose taurine crags hug the blue sky,
amorous as the kisses of Pasiphae; across the Elysian
fields of myrtle and asphodel, up the eagle-crested
slopes of Olympus, and over the shining sun-scorched
sands of Ammon, tawny and silken as the crouching
form of some colossal lion, to the cool groves of Eleusis
child-like dreaming in the bosom of silvery Attica by
the blue ^gean sea.

Yet those who would drink deeper of the wine of
this magical Eucharist, spilt with due reverence on the
pages of this volume, they must seek it in the Sibyl-
line verses of those books from which this one has
drawn its life-blood. And they are:

Aceldama.

The Tale of Archais.

Songs of the Spirit.

Jezebel.

An Appeal to the American People.

Jephthah.

The Mother's Tragedy.

The Soul of Osiris.

Carmen Saeculare.

Tannhauser.

Berashith.

Ahab.

The God-Eater

Alice.

The Sword of Song.

The Star and the Garter.

The Argonauts.

Goetia.

PREFACE 7

Why Jesus Wept.

Oracles.

Orpheus.

Rosa Mundi.

Gargoyles.

Collected Works, vols, i, ii, and iii.
By which, if they have eyes to perceive, they will
become sacramental and holy, through the fire-bap-
tism of a new birth, and will hold the key of all
mysteries locked in the esoteric sign of the Sabbatic
Goat, the Baphomet of Mendes,the signatures of Solve
and Coagula, — " The Everlasting Yea and Nay."

A. M.E.N.

My faults are more numerous than I care to think
of; yet it is without fear or trepidation that I offer this
essay to the public. It has been a difficult task. In
simplewords and complex symbols Crowley has written
with St. Leo: — "Know, O man, thy dignity;" and
this I have in this essay attempted to explain, though
many I am afraid will misunderstand me, and more
still misinterpret my modest efforts. For these latter
ones I can but exclaim:

"Caeterum scis quid ego cogitem, scortum scorteum;
Di tibi dent, nudosque lares inopemque senectam et
longas hyemes perpetuamque sitim."

And for those former, bid them contemplate well
the words of St. Augustine:

' ' Such as the love of man is, such is he himself. Dost
thou love the earth? Thou art earth. Dost thou love
God? What shall I say? Thou art God."

J. F. C. F.

FOREWORD

IN " Frazer's Magazine" of November, 1866, may
be found the following :

"Wherever there is any kind of true genius, we
have no right to drive it mad by ridicule or invective ;
we must deal with it wisely, justly, fairly. Some of
these passages which have been selected as evidence
of (the poet's) plain speaking, have been wantonly
misunderstood. The volume, as a whole, is neither
profane nor indecent. A little more clothing in our
uncertain climate might perhaps have been attended
with advantage. . . . To us this volume, for the first

time, conclusively settles that Mr. is not a mere

brilliant rhetorician or melodious twanger of another
man's lyre, but authentically a poet."

So writes the critic. The name I have omitted is
that of the last of the great Victorian poets, Algernon
Charles Swinburne. In the dying glory of this last
great singer of the nineteenth century, the deepening
twilight shows but few rising stars; alone perhaps
amid the younger generation of poets — alas, how
many and yet how few — Aleister Crowley stands forth
with no little of the glory of the great Victorian cast
o'er him ; enhancing our pleasures, and enchanting
our senses. The Sim kisses the Moon, and through
the diaphanous veil of the vestal is seen the subtle

lo THE STAR IN THE WEST

contour of her form. But no vestal is Crowley, no
mere milk-and-bun-walk, where we may rest and take
our fill; for he has unstrung the mystic lyre of life
from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and of
Evil, singing old songs and new, flinging shrill notes
of satire to this tumultuous world, as some stormy
petrel shrilly crying to the storm ; or sweet notes of
love, soft as the whispering wings of a butterfly.

Here are the jewels of Heaven, of Havilah, and of
Eden, with not a little of the fire of Hell, the flames
of Gehenna, and the darkness of Duat. If we look
for pyramids and colossi disappointment will be our
lot; we cannot hold, as Hanuman of Ind, a mountain
in one hand and a forest in the other, neither can we
gaze on a celestial Meru or Olympus ; but as we look,
and here it is only the searcher who is rewarded, we
find a little jewel, then another, and still another, till,
as we grasp them, their very light is caught by their
unfound fellows, and our path is lit as a fairy dell by
a thousand wonders of light and of beauty.

"A little more clothing," the critic writes, as he
perused the " Poems and Ballads," perhaps, yet we '
do not feel its need in the glowing works before us.
Forty long years have passed, and the world moves.
Crowley fairly puts his characters to bed, tucks them
up, and does not blow the candle out with cryptic
Morse-like dot and dash, leaving the imagination to
wallow in the dark, intelligible to the baby-mind of
sucklings, and we admire him all the more for not
doing so; his undraped virginity is delightful, and if
his maidens lack vestments and his matrons mantles,
it is a hearty sight, a robust sight, it flushes the drains
of our mind, and discloses a heart lying beneath all
the conventional tweeds and silks of our sleek respect-

FOREWORD II

ability. The stale odour of Mrs. Grundy's petticoats
vanishes, neither is it replaced by the patchouli of
Thais, nor the musk of Aspasia ; and if the aroma of
a little human sweat does salute our nostrils, it is at
least a healthy human smell — an odour of sanctity —
infinitely preferable to all the ancient pot-pourri of
Philistia, that young and old ladies are alike so fond of
distributing among their pretty speeches, as well as
their pretty garments.

" Is life, then, to resolve itself for us into a chain of
exhilarating pangs?" asked Pallas, in Mr. Gosse's
" Hypolympia," in answer to the query of .^sculapius,
"What is pleasure?" We see the mortal form of the
immortal healer climbing along the jutting cornice
of some cliff, in search for the simples of life; and
as the zephyrs waft his long ashen locks around his
furrowed brow, his trembling hand clutches some
rugged crag, more perhaps from joy than fear. And
so, as we now open the works of Aleister Crowley,
we are filled with an exhilarating chain of pangs;
mortal-like we are never sated, and as our lips taste
the nectar of true poetry we tremblingly clutch the
crags of Parnassus in search for the Asphodel of
Love, Wisdom, and Beauty. Here, as we turn some
beetling height, the dying rays of the Swinburnian
sun sink, those rays that rufiled the vestal purity of
the clouds to the rosy blush of a lover's kiss, and in
the departing light we again find the mystic Trinity
midst the hellebore and thistles of existence, en-
throned, eternal. The sun sinks, and the last notes
of the nightingale die into the stillness of falling night.
The emerald sky like the robe of some car-borne
Astart6, slashed with an infinite orange and red, fades
into the sombre garment of night ; and above silently

12 THE STAR IN THE WEST

breaks a primal sea gemmed with all the colours of
the opal, deepenmg- into a limitless amethyst, darkens,
and the sun goes out. The spangfled pall of Night is
drawn, and the lull of death is o'er us ; but no, hark !
the distant boom of a beetle is carried across the still
glowing welkin, it is the signal drum announcing the
marriage of Night and Day. The crescent moon
rises, diaphanous and fair, and the world wakes to a
chant :

DIONYSUS

I bring ye wine from above.

From the vats of the storied sun;
For every one of ye love,

And life for every one.
Ye shall dance on hill and level ;

Ye shall sing in hollows and height
In the festal mystical revel,

The rapturous Bacchanal rite !
The rocks and trees are yours,

And the waters under the hill.
By the might of that which endures,

The holy heaven of will !
I kindle a flame like a torrent

To rush from star to star ;
Your hair as a comet's horrent,

Ye shall see things as they are !
I lift the mask of matter ;

I open the heart of man ;
For I am of force to shatter

The cast that hideth — Pan !
Your loves shall lap up slaughter,

And dabbled with roses of blood
Each desperate darling daughter

Shall swim in the fervid flood.
I bring ye laughter and tears,

The kisses that foam and bleed,
The joys of a million years,

The flowers that bear no seed.
My life is bitter and sterile.

Its flame is a wandering star.

FOREWORD 13

Ye shall pass in pleasure and peril

Across the mystical bar
That is set for wrath and weeping

Against the children of earth ;
But ye in singing and sleeping

Shall pass in measure and mirth !
I lift my wand and wave you

Through hill to hill of delight :
My rosy rivers lave you

In innermost lustral light.
I lead you, lord of the maze,

In the darkness free of the sun ;
In spite of the spite that is day's,

We are wed, we are wild, we are one!^

' Orpheus," vol. iii, p. 207.

I

The Chapter known as

Ube XooftingsOlass

In which chapter it is related how it surpasseth in

brilHance all other glasses in which we see darkly,

and how by it we see face to face ; and of its divers

reflections, and of the brightness and perfection of

its surface, and the whiteness of the silver

of which it is moulded ; for it was cast

from' the crucible of many mysteries,

and fashioned by the cunning

hand of a master who will

endure to the end.

ON surveying the works of Aleister Crowley the
two essential facts that grip our understanding
are : firstly, the superabundance of his genius ; and
secondly, the diversity of his form. * ' My womb is
pregnant with mad moons and suns,"^ he writes,
and though we could hardly agree to endow so virile
a master with so feminine an organ, yet we can
attribute something very like it to his brain. Pregnant
it certainly is, and more, being already the mother of
a large family, a family as diverse as the offspring of
Uranus, father of the Gods, born to him by Earth,
earthy and celestial. Sweet lyrics are crushed cheek
by jowl with the most corrosive satire, sonorous
heroics and blank verse at times merge into the most
raucous of Hudibrasian doggerel, rimes of the sweet-
est and the most perverse character ring in our aston-
ished ear, tragedy and farce, ever extremes : Paul and
Virginie sitting on the knees of Pantagruel, blowing
kisses through the Sephirotic circle of eternity. At
times we listen to the yearning hopes of a Paracelsus,
or the noble words of a Tannhauser; at times warm
arms are flung around us, and the hot kisses of some
Messaline suffocate our very breath, leading us into
the mansions of a de Sade and through the gardens
of an Aretino, horrid with the frenzy of Eros. Or,
again, we are treading with the sages of philosophy,

' The Temple of the Holy Ghost, vol. i, p. i66.
C

i8 THE STAR IN THE WEST

or 'midst the stars in search of the Psyche of events;
dreams almost monstrous in their intensity seize our
troubled brain, deep problems of psychology, of sex,
of the carnal, of the pathic, and of evil, all inter-
webbed and woven with the eternal filament of good.
And so if we read this strange poet aright, we shall
see a,s we progress onwards, that he has struck a
sonorous note from the rim of Time, fulfilled of the
knowledge of good and evil, sweet to the ears of
those who are born children by the daughters of men
to the sons of God, sweet as that mystic fruit was to
the lips of Eve, daughter of God, child of the mystic
Man. But we must speed on, taking in this chapter
swift glances at the magnificent scenery that these
volumes offer up to us, plucking the lilies of spring
and the roses of summer, and weave them into a
laureate wreath with the fiery leaves of the dying
year.

Poe, in that little masterpiece of his, "The Poetic
Principle," lays down that the value of a poem lies in
the ratio of its elevating excitement, the excitement
being the power it has in elevating the soul. And
here we think, were Poe still living, he would have
found no small part of his ideal realized. By soul we
naturally do not mean a haloed fowl strumming dithy-
rambs on a harp, or the mere doppelganger of the
living; but that inner power of good and evil which
lies latent in self, controlled by that intuitive con-
sciousness within us, and manifested in our appetites
and desires; this intangible soul aspiring upwards is
called Virtue, sinking downwards Vice; finding in-
finity in the conceptions of nether and upper, heaven
and hell, paradise and gehenna ; and finality on earth,
—its sporting ground. Further Poe states : that an

THE LOOKING-GLASS 19

epic was of itself a nullity, and that a poem of great
length, commencing as it might in exaltation, ended
in nine cases out of ten in somnolence. Poetry must
stimulate, it must irritate the soul in some definite
manner, or else it ceases to be poetry. For when
once poetry exerts a soporific power its whole object
is lost, and, as a flash of lightning, it must be vivid,
bright, flaming for a moment, awful, eloquent, rush-
ing from the darkness of night through the flashing
elements of day into the silence of eternity.

And this is exactly the poetry we here find. No
poems are of any great length, no poems here contain
a labour on the part of the reader to attain the end,'
though in some places the labours of Hercules seem
insignificant compared with the labours of mental un-
knotting, but even in such places (where the sense
becomes tangled in the reader's mind) he loses none
of the beauty of rime and rhythm, he never becomes
bored, never weary. Set in the pure gold of verse and
line, lie lyrics of surpassing beauty: Tannhauser (the
longest of the poems) would be a magnificent con-
templation even if we cut from it its sparkling songs,
but with them it becomes superb, neither are there
too many; the queen of our poet's ideals is no gilded
.prostitute, no Theodora hung with a myriad flashing
jewels, but rather some chaste priestess carrying on
her breast the mystic symbol of I sis, whose belt is a
jewelled Zodiac, and in whose hand is the eternal
Ankh.

This interspersing of lyrics has been carried to a
charming intensity of expression, and their effect on
the mind is one full of joy, no cloying, no surfeit, no

* Except perhaps in Orpheus.

20 THE STAR IN THE WEST

repletion ; the variety of the dishes is extraordinary in
delicacy and piquancy as well as in number.

The morals of a nation can with fair accuracy be
gauged from the condition of its arts and literature,
and in what a state are ours? Our music the jangling
ditties of the streets, our paintings, posters and be-
dizened Jewesses; and our literature, heroically vulgar,
vulgarly obscene, and obscenely insipid.

Morals, the nation has none, merely a better art in
disguising than in former times, that is all. We no
longer can produce a Swift, a Congreve, or a Dryden,
a Smollett, a Lever, or a Sterne, and yet our writers
are legion — and as feculent as the flabby prostitutes
of the street. The facetiae of the fifteenth century,
" Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles," " The Decameron,"
"The Heptameron," "The Nights of Straparola,"
" Brantdme," etc., etc., are not only masterpieces for
all time, but are pure, even chaste, compared with the
the virginal lusts that are becoming so fashionable in
our modern literature, whose maidens are Lesbians,
and whose heroes are satyrs. Europa is no longer
satisfied with her bull, but seeks an ichor-maddened
elephant; Leda disdains her swan, and burns for a
straddling ostrich; the goat of lechery sits enthroned
o'er us, and is fast coupling with the mind of the
nation, and spawning offspring effeminate, lustful,
and degenerate. Tribades with their evil-smelling
kisses swarm over our pages, heroines are no longer
satisfied with mere men, but must strain to their
breasts legless monsters; whilst a hero will listen to
his loved one snorting in the arms of some lusty
Pathan. Such literature is revolting, not in its mere
descriptions, for these are nothing to the student,
being generally but poorly described realities, but

THE LOOKING-GLASS 21

they are horrible when strewn broadcast among the
children of the nation. We still have our Bible and
need no more erotica. Filth has been defined as matter
out of place, and so is this pathic literature, relegated
to the realms of sexual psychology in the works of an
Ellis or an Ebing is one thing, yet the government of
this nation cannot stomach them thus, and seizes,
expels, and burns; but if these horrid sores of the
human soul are cut out and plastered on the pages of
the fickle fiction of the day, then are they passed in
seductive covers as proper nourishment for the nation,
and devoured with relish and avidity. One minute,
impatient reader, for I hear you mutter: "Are not
these very aberrations set forth with no mean lustre on
the pages of the works of Aleister Crowley? " Listen.
Have any of Crowley's works been printed pueris
virginibiisqueP Are they intended for the gaping
public ? Are they devoured by mental babes and suck-
lings, or worse, forcibly crammed down their throats
in simple or other forms? I think not. To some it
may seem curious that these poems are published by
a society called " The Society for the Propagation of
Religious Truth." By whom is the Bible published?
Is it not also a religious society, and is the Bible
immaculate? Was it not Sir Richard Burton, the
greatest of Orientalists, who resolved in case the rabid
pornophobic suggestions of certain ornaments of the
home press were acted upon, to appear in court with
the Bible and Shakespeare under one arm, and
Petronius Arbiter and Rabelais under the other? And
I remember a certain sentence — characteristic of the
man, — he was describing those people who are unable
to read crude texts, and needs must have them bowd-
lerized and expurgated, lest they fall into a priapic

22 THE STAR IN THE WEST

frenzy: " The man must be prurient and lecherous as
a dog-faced baboon in rut to have aught of passion
excited by either."

This is all true enough, but I must call a halt. I
had not intended here to write a series of apologetics,
for I leave that to the poet and his pen, who can
well look after themselves; but what I wished to point
out was the deplorable state into which our literature
has fallen. Its ever increasing demand for sensation
has been its destruction; everyone now is a mental
Trimalchio whose appetite has to be awakened by
the most piquant and fantastic of dishes. Scott,
Dickens, and Thackeray are still (I believe) read by
an ever decreasing number of school-girls ; Flaubert,
Gautier and Balzac — who would have shocked the
youthful years of our parents — have become dull and
tedious; a few cranks praise Tourgenief, Tolstoi and
Gorky, whilst one out of every hundred thousand may
know that there was such a man as Dostoieffsky.
And poetry, O greatest of the Muses, thy fate is truly
a sad one! Much verse is produced which might be
placed with last year's store lists — you know where ;
some is distinctly good, but it is soon lost in the
raging sea of poetic dialect, and hackneyed naivetd.
Here and there we come across a charming lyric,
which the carping whisky-and-water critic will at
once demolish as weak, troubled, vague, etc., etc.
Not long ago my eyes lit on the following which I
considered a charming verse from a poetic point of
view, if not from that of a morbid anatomist:

Look down into the river. Can you see
The mingled images the water shows?

So lies my soul in yours. As close as lie
The folded petals in an unblown rose.

THE LOOKING-GLASS 23

Yet the little thing who "stinks and stings" was
not satisfied, the second metaphor actually weakened
the effect of the first, etc., etc. With such have poets
to contend, but I do not think such homunCuli worry
Aleister Crowley much. His poetry is his own, and he
gives it us as it is written without respect of persons
or opinions, for his masters have been the greatest of
our race.

In these poems we find a certain preponderance
of Swinburne, Blake, Browning, Keats, Shelley, and
Rossetti. In the dedication to "Jephthah," which is
addressed to Algernon Charles Swinburne, we read
the following:

As streams get water of the sun-smit sea,
Seeking my ocean and my sun in thee.^

And this discipleship to the greatest and last of the
Victorian poets has given us many a subtle and
enthralling line. The scene when Charicles wakes
and catches Archais to his breast is worthy of the
bard who sang of "Tristram and Iseult." It is as
follows:

He sprang, he caught her to his breast; the maid

Smiled and lay back to look at him. He laid

Her tender body on the sloping field.

And felt her sighs in his embraces yield

A sweeter music than all birds. But she,

Lost in the love she might not know, may see

No further than his face, and yet, aware

Of her own fate, resisted like a snare

Her own soft wishes. As she looked and saw

His eager face, the iron rod of law

Grew like a misty pillar in the sky.

In all her veins the blood's desires die,

' Jephthah, vol. i, p. 66.

24 THE STAR IN THE WEST

And then — O sudden ardour ! — all her mind
And memory faded, and looked outward, blind,
Beyond their bitterness. Her arms she flung-
Around him, and with amorous lips and tongue
Tortured his palate with extreme desire,
And like a Maenad maddened; equal fire
Leapt in his veins; locked close for love they lie,
The heart's dumb word exprest without a sigh
In the strong magic of a lover's kiss. '

These superb lines, like those of Swinburne, are in
reality a series of brilliant lyrical illustrations depict-
ing the story in measures of divine song. More we
find in this same poem, and in others also; the follow-
ing fine sonnet entitled " The Summit of the Amorous
Mountain," is distinctly Swinburnian; I give it in
its entirety:

To love you. Love, is all my happiness ;

To kill you with my kisses ; to devour

Your whole ripe beauty in the perfect hour
That mingles us in one supreme caress ;
To drink the purple of your thighs ; to press

Your beating bosom like a living flower;

To die in your embraces, in the shower
That dews like death your swooning loveliness.

To know you love me ; that your body leaps
With the quick passion of your soul ; to know
Your fragrant kisses sting my spirit so ;

To be one soul where Satan smiles and sleeps;

Ah ! in the very triumph-hour of Hell
Satan himself remembers whence he fell ! ^

Again, such lines as these from the "Triumph of
Man":

And all the earth is blasted ; the green sward
Burns where it touches, and the barren sod

^ The Tale of Archais, vol. i, p. n.

= The Temple of the Holy Ghost, vol. i, p. i8i.

THE LOOKING-GLASS 25

Rejects the poison of the blood of God.

To tread base thoughts as our high thoughts have trod,
Deep in the dust, the carrion that was God ; '

remind us strongly of such pieces as " Before a Cru-
cifix," whilst others take us into the mystic and
simple land of Blake, such as the duet of Charicles
and Archais :

Hush ! the music swells apace,

Rolls its silver billows up
Through the void demesne of space

To the heavens' azure cup !
Hush, my love, and sleep shall sigh

This is immortality ! ^

Other lines again hold us enthralled with the extra-
ordinary power they contain, expressed in a single
word. Thus in the poem "The Lesbian Hell," we
find ourselves in the unutterable void of Orcus, where
kisses are flung in vain, and where around us pale
women fleet :

Whose empty fruitlessness assails the night
With hollow repercussion, like dim tombs
Wherein some vampire glooms.'

This last line is one of the most expressive ever
written by Crowley, and in the last word "glooms"
is concentrated more than terror or fear, a brooding
unnameable horror, comparable to the word " crowd "
that Blake makes use of in his " Mad Song ":

Like a fiend in a cloud

With howling woe
After night I do crowd

And with night will go.

^ Mysteries : Lyrical and Dramatic, vol. i, pp. 106, 107.

" The Tale of Archais, vol. i, p. 27.

^ The Temple of the Holy Ghost, vol. i, p. 185.

26 THE STAR IN THE WEST

Both poets have chosen here not the only word that
could be chosen, but the only word that would in the
above poems express the maximum amount of horror
in the one case, and of desire in the other.

Very different from Blake do we find such a poem
as "Vespers," which, though differing in rime, in
cadence and spirit, is reminiscent of Rossetti's
" Blessed Damozel ":

Still in those avenues of light,

No maid, with golden zone,
And lily garment that from sight

Half hides the ivory throne,
Lay in my arms the livelong night

To call my soul her own. '

Whilst parts of the poem " Messaline " with which
" Alice" opens remind us of poor "Jenny."

Tennyson, if we are to judge from the introduction
to "Alice," does not seem to hold a very high posi-
tion in the opinion of Aleister Crowley. " He is a neu-
rasthenic counter-jumper " certainly would not have
pleased Poe, who regarded him as the noblest poet
that ever lived. Nevertheless we find traces of the
great laureate's work in these poems, such as the idea
contained in the following verse of " De Profundis ":

I have dreamed life a circle or a line,

Called God, and Fate, and Chance, and Man, divine.

I know not all I say, but through it all
Mark the dim hint of ultimate sunshine ! ''

which is almost identical with that in Canto LIV of " In
Memoriam." A poem written in the metre of Tenny-

Songs of the Spirit, vol. i, p. 53.

Mysteries: Lyrical and Dramatic, vol. i, p. 113.

THE LOOKING-GLASS 27

son's most famous work, yet differing in cadence, is
"The Blood Lotus."

Quaint carven vampire bats, unseen in curious hollows of the

trees,
Or deadlier serpents coiled at ease round carcases of birds

unclean ;

All wandering changeful spectre shapes that dance in slow
sweet measure round

And merge themselves in the profound, nude women and dis-
torted apes

Grotesque and hairy, in their rage more rampant than the

stallion steed ;
There is no help : their horrid need on these pale women they

assuage.^

Another poem that in parts reminds us of the " In
Memoriam " is " The Nameless Quest," such lines as:

I was wed
Unto the part, and could not grasp the whole. ^

breathe a great and similar doubt. As in many respects
the agnosticism of Tennyson's "In Memoriam" re-
sembles the atheistic free thought of FitzGerald's
" Omar Khayydm," so do both the above-mentioned
poems, and the first is of similar metre, its quatrains
containing, as those of the poet of Khorassdn, flights
of great power of thought; the following five quatrains
are well worth quoting:

We weep them as they slip away; we gaze
Back on the likeness of the former days —

The hair we fondle and the lips we kiss —
Roses grow yellow and no purple stays.

Why not with time? To-morrow we may see
The circle ended — if to-morrow be —

^ Oracles, vol. ii, p. 13.

" The Temple of the Holy Ghost, vol. i, p. 191.

28 THE STAR IN THE WEST

And gfaze on chaos, and a week bring back
Adam and Eve beneath the apple tree.

Join'st thou thy feeble hands in foolish prayer

To him thy brain hath moulded and set there

In thy brain's heaven? Such a god replies

As thy fears move. So men pray everywhere.

God did first work in earth when womankind

He chipped from Adam's rib — a thankless task
I wot His wisdom has long since repined.

When I am dead remember me for this
That I bade workers work, and lovers kiss;

Laughed with the Stoic at the dream of pain.
And preached with Jesus the evangel — bliss. ^

Whilst such Hnes as the following in the second poem
also remind us of the astronomer poet:

O thou, zelator of this Paradise,
Tell thou the secret of the pillar ! None
Can hear thee, of the souls beneath the sun.
Speak ! or the very Godhead in thee dies.
For we are many, and thy name is One.^

Before we leave the glowing east, one more curious
similarity still strikes us, it is that though in so many
ways the ideas of Aleister Crowley are akin to those
of Omar Khayydm, yet his fertile imagination also
engenders flights as spiritual as those contained in
the melodious ghazals of Jeldladdin. In more than
one place we come across lines similar to these in
Tannhauser:

I say, then, " I; " and yet it is not " I "
Distinct, but " I " incorporate in All.
I am the Resurrection and the Life !

1 Mysteries: Lyrical and Dramatic, vol. i, pp. 109-112. (The
metre though not the cadence is that of " Laus Veneris.")

2 The Temple of the Holy Ghost, vol. i, p. 191.

THE LOOKING-GLASS 29

The work is finished, and the Night rolled back!

I am the rising- Sun of Life and Light,

The Glory of the Shining of the Dawn !

I am Osiris ! I the Lord of Life

Triumphant over death —

O Sorrow, Sorrow, Sorrow of the World ! ^

That such similarities as we have pointed out above
show Aleister Crowley to be a copyist, must be far
from the minds of all his readers. Youth most certainly
tends towards certain ideals, and frequently results
in a definite hero-worship; but genius cannot be bound
for long; it will eventually find its own level. The mere
fact that certain forms of thought and modes of ex-
pression occur here as they have occurred elsewhere,
should be as a literary barometer, enabling us to judge
the mental standard of the writer. All great writers
will have many points in common. It is more than
probable that Aleister Crowley had already read most
of Shakespeare before he wrote "The Mother's Tra-
gedy," and yet, because of this we should not neces-
sarily say that the following magnificent lines were
due to the influence of the great master, notwith-
standing the fact that they are in many respects equal
to mHch of his best:

Your breath, that burns upon me, wraps me round
With whirling passion, pierces through my veins
With its unhallowed fire, constrains, compels.
Drags out the corpse of twenty, years ago
From the untrusty coffin of my mind,
To poison, to corrupt, to strike you there
Blind with its horror." ^

Many other pieces are almost equally grand, the last
speech of Tannhauser to Heinrich is truly magnificent:

' Tannhauser, vol. i, p. 261.

^ The Mother's Tragedy, vol. i, p. 160.

30 THE STAR IN THE WEST

And verily
My life was borne on the dark stream of death
Down whirling aeons, linked abysses, columns
Built of essential time "'....

In "The Violet's Love Story,'"' or in " Dora,'" we
have as simple a poem as could be written, and in one
of the verses of a chorus in "Jephthah," beginning
" There flashes the heart of a rose,"* one of the most
mystical. Here is a furious inspiration in blank verse
(the prophet in " Jephthah " speaks):

Ha!

The rose has washed its petals, and the blood

Pours through its burning centre from my heart.

The fire consumes the light; the rosy flame

Leaps through the veins of blue, and tinges them

With such a purple as incarnadines

The western sky when storms are amorous

And lie upon the breast of toiling ocean,

Such billows to beget as earth devours

In ravening whirlpool gulphs. My veins are full.

Throbbing with fire more potent than all wine,

All sting of fleshly pangs and pleasures. Oh!

The god is fast upon my back; he rides

My spirit like a stallion; for I hate

The awful thong his hand is heavy with.'

Again, in "The Nameless Quest":

Then surged the maddening tide
Of ray intention. Onward ! Let me run !
Thy steed, O Moon ! Thy chariot, O Sun !
Lend me fierce feet, winged sandals, wings as wide
As thine, O East wind ! And the goal is won ! "

' Tannhauser, vol. i, p. 261.

' Songs of the Spirit, vol. i, p. 38.

' Rosa Mundi and other Love Songs, vol. iii, p. 59.

* Jephthah, vol. i, p. 77.

" Ibid. p. 67.

" The Temple of the Holy Ghost, vol. i, p. 191.

THE LOOKING-GLASS 31

Little, if any, poetry of a truly epic nature can we
find ; the nearest is the song of Tannhauser, somewhat
of a prophecy, somewhat of an anthem:

I rose within the elemental ball.

And lo ! the Ancient One of Days did sit !

His head and hair were white as wool. His eyes

A flaming fire : and from the splendid mouth

Flashed the Eternal Sword !

Lo ! Lying at his feet as dead, I saw

The leaping-forth of Law :

Division of the North wind and the South,

The lightning of the armies of the Lord ;

East rolled asunder from the rended West ;

Height clove the depth ; the Voice begotten said :

" Divided be thy ways and limited ! "

Answered the reflux and the indrawn breath:

" Let there be Life, and Death ! " ^

Worthy of the author of "The Marriage of Heaven
and Hell!"

"Let there be Life and Death," and the link between
these two is Love. Here we will give but one or two
curious examples, dealing with the great songs of love
in the next chapter. As a singer of love-songs Aleister
Crowley excels. The following is from " The Star
and the Garter " :

Your lips are gathered up to mine ;
Your bosom heaves with fearful breath ;
Your scent is keen as floral wine,
Inviting me, and love, to death.''

Also the following is charming in its simplicity :

She has a lithe white body, slim
And limber, fairy-like, a snake
Hissing some Babylonian hymn
Tangled in the Assyrian brake. ^

' Tannhauser, vol. i, p. 252.

^ The Star and the Garter, vol. iii, p. 11. '^ Ibid. vol. in, p. 10.

32 THE STAR IN THE WEST

A curious Swinburnian strain of passion is found
wedged in the satiric lines of "Why Jesus Wept."
Percy, the youth flatulent with love, chants to his
Angela — society — thus :

To me she is

The rosy incarnation of a kiss,

The royal rapture of a young delight,

The mazy music of virginity.

Sun of the day, moon of the night,

All, all to me ! 1

And again:

Love, love, these raptures are like springtide rain
Nestling among green leaves."

One more example of the diversity of Crowley's pen,
before we deal with his place in the history of poetry.
In the "God-Eater" we come across a most weird
form of poetic imagination in the chants of Rupha —
the hag of Eternity:

Crafty! Crafty!

That is the omen.

Fear not the foemen ! [She rises up.

Mine is the spoil

Of the grimly toil.

Gloomy, gloomy!

Ah! but I laugh.

He is but a fool.

He has lost !

He is lost !

Take the staff!

Trace the rule

Of the circle crossed ! '

We have now seen, more or less, some of the chief
influences which have exerted their sway over our
poet's mind ; and I think we have shown him to be a

' Why Jesus Wept, vol. iii, p. 39. " /bid. vol. iii, p. 40,

' The God-Eater, vol. ii, p. 135.

THE LOOKING-GLASS 33

worthy pupil of the great masters we have had occa-
sion to name. Now that I have pointed out these
certain influences, illustrating them by means of a few
quotations, I intend to enter more into the history of his
poetry and also the place it fills in the history of English
poetry generally. This is not altogether an easy matter.
Firstly, in selecting distinctive specimens it is difficult
not to help being guided by individual taste ; secondly,
the labour of sorting the finest out of the fine is a
work which needs no small powers of application ; and
thirdly, how often may not the individual selector be
wrong in his choice? But this latter difficulty is easily
overcome by the reader, who has only to pick and choose
for himself; the work of an appreciative essayist being
merely that of producing a characteristic display of
what he considers the most attractive wares. It is not
intended here in any way to assume immaculacy for
our author, far from it, for faults are to be found here
as in every other work, great or small, false rime
and metre, half a step left out here and there, some-
times a whole one : but taking these poems as a whole,
these lapses are remarkably few, and it must also be
borne in mind that in nearly every case they are inten-
tional lapses from the orthodox rules of poetic cadence
and metre. One command Crowley alone obeys, and
that is: that all verse — rime, rhythm, and metre — to
be considered as poetry, must be musical.' Without

' As a good example I will quote the following- opening lines
of a sonnet addressed to "the Secretary of State," by Wilson
Bonchord in Poems composed in Prison ;

When Crime's sad victim has been tried and brought
Within the circle of the difficult sphere
Which England's penal statutes appoint him here :
To expiate by patient toil and thought.
Neither the second nor third line scans; nevertheless the
P

34 THE STAR IN THE WEST

music there can be no poetry, at best but a kind of
poetic prose as found in the Prophetic Books of Blake,
and in the works of Walt Whitman. Yet in Blake, I
think, we do find many consistent irregularities, which
have been entirely misunderstood by many of his
editors and critics. However, it was not till Swinburne
loomed athwart the conscious regularity of the Tenny-
sonian era, a poetic pre-Raphaelite, that, strictly
speaking, a conscious and musical irregularity became
admissible, wedging its way in, and splitting up the
metrical structure of perfect scansion.

In " Atalanta in Calydon " we find a further break-
ing away from the dramatic formalities inaugurated
during the post-restoration era : Swinburne seeking a
more perfect model in the old Tragedies of Greece.
This had already been partially carried out by Keats,
who definitely broke away from the Miltonic style of
Wordsworth and Coleridge, and was more than half
completed by his contemporary, Shelley. But it was
not till Swinburne himself seized the finely-strung
lyre of the unconsciously irregular author of " Prome-
theus," and attuned it to the rustle of Blake's angel-
winged voice, that it can be said that a certain system
of irregularities in metre became admissible in the
formal court of poetry.

As the Rossetti brotherhood of painters returned to
the stiff and simple elegance as displayed in the
"Primavera" of Botticelli, so did Swinburne go back
to the simple beauty of Greek tragedy as depicted in

second is good, as it is musical : the extra half-step in the word
"difficult" carrying with it a difficulty, and thus emphasizing
the meaning; whilst in the third, there is neither scansion nor
music.

THE LOOKING-GLASS 35

Euripides/ Crowley does the same, as we see in
"The Tale of Archais," also in "The Mother's Trag-
edy" and "The Fatal Force"; but in these two latter
dramas with this important diiference, that instead
of applying Greek style to Greek scenery, he applies
it to a totally different end, namely to the expres-
sion of modern surroundings, or to his own in-
trinsic ideas, as in the last-named play, which, even
more so than in " The Mother's Tragedy" is, as we
shall see later on, a subtle discount on present-day
morality.

What Beardsley and Whistler did for art, Crowley
is now doing for poetry. Beardsley, especially, suc-
ceeded Rossetti just as Crowley is now superseding
Swinburne. A poetic iconoclast to the very backbone,
we find Crowley, especially in his later works, break-
ing away from every poetic convention and restraint.
At first it makes itself apparent in "The Star and the
Garter," which was unwound from that same tangled
skein from out of which Browning had ravelled
" Fifine," and then, in the full power of manhood,
in "Why Jesus Wept"; which one day will find its
historic niche in the temple of Poetry, somewhere
between the " Hudibras " of Butler and the " Endy-
mion " of Keats.

Though Crowley, as can be clearly seen throughout
his works, is not only a great admirer but also a dis-
ciple of Browning's, he nevertheless vigorously attacks
that great master's cacophony and wilful obscurity of
meaning, in that eccentric curiosity of diction ' ' The
Sword of Song," in which our ears are assailed by the
most monstrous diversity of noises, following in a

' Rather than Sophocles or Aeschylus.

36 THE STAR IN THE WEST

rapid and dazzling succession till the ideas engendered

in our brains are sporting in an outburst of mental

leap-frog. The following are a few :

" Fleas kill us " with "Aeschylus "

" Trough hock lees " ,, " Sophocles "
" Globule us " ,, " Aristobulus " '

And here is a good example :

Let me help Babu Chander Grish up !

As by a posset of Hunyadi

Clear mind ! Was Soudan of the Mahdi

Not cleared by Kitchener? Ah, Tchhup!

Such nonsense for sound truth you dish up,

Were I magician, no mere cadi.

Not Samuel's ghost you'd make me wish up,

Nor Saul's (the mighty son of Kish) up,

But IngersoU's or Bradlaugh's, pardie !

By spells and cauldron stews that squish up.

Or purifying of the Nadi,

Till Stradivarius or Amati

Shriek in my stomach ! Sarasate,

Such strains ! Such music as once Sadi

Made Persia ring with ! I who fish up

No such from soul may yet cry : Vade

Retro Satanas! Tom Bond Bishop! '

We have mentioned " Why Jesus Wept " as one of
the most irregular of Crowley's poems, yet its irregu-
larities are regularly irregular throughout, bearing a
similar relationship to a true poem like " Rosa Mundi"

' The Sword of Song, vol. ii, p. 145.

* Ibid. vol. ii, p. 148. Browning's cacophony in "The Flight
of the Duchess " is truly extraordinary :

" Soul a stir up " with " streaky syrup "

" Went trickle " ,, "ventricle"

" Sperm oil " ,, " turmoil "

" Wreathy hop '• „ "^thiop"

" Matters equine " „ " French weak wine. "

THE LOOKING-GLASS 37

that a comic song would to a great oratorio. " Why
Jesus Wept" is a satiric farce, "Rosa Mundi " a
great love anthem, almost we might say a Wagnerian
opera in rime, and comparable in many respects in
its continuous though irregular symphony to the
" Lycidas " of Milton. Yet, nevertheless, "Why
Jesus Wept" is the more characteristic of the two,
and certainly the most iconoclastic of any.

In "Orpheus," Books I and II, we find a poetic
regularity almost strictly adhered to, not so, how-
ever, in Book III, and in " The Argonauts." But it is
not till we get to "Rodin in Rime" that we find
practically every sonnet and quatorzain possessing
some infringement of the orthodox rules of poetry;
yet it cannot be said that these poems, chiefly in
iambic verse broken by the occasional introduction
of another foot, usually an anapaest, read unmusic-
ally on account of its presence. Take for instance :

Cloistral seclusion of the galleried pines
Is mine to-day : these groves are fit for Pan —
O rich with Bacchic frenzy, and his wine's
Atonement for the infinite woe of man ! '

Here "cloistral" is a spondee; " eried pines," an
(imperfect) anapaest; and so on.
Again in "La Fortune " :

" Hail, Tyche! From the Araalthean horn
Pour forth the store of love ! I lowly bend
Before thee : I invoke thee at the end
When other gods are fallen and put to scorn.
Thy foot is to my lips ; my sighs unborn
RisCj touch and curl about thy heart ; they spend

' W. E. Henley, Rodin in Rime, vol. iii, p. 1 19.

38 THE STAR IN THE WEST

Pitiful love. Lovelier pity, descend

And bring me luck who am lonely and forlorn."

Here " piti " is a trochee; "lovelier," a spondee;
" pity," a trochee. The whole metre breaks up, as if
the singer's heart burst in despair.

Whilst in "Bouches d'Enfer" we find such lines
as :

From the long-held leash! The headlong, hot-mouthed girl,'

in which, as we read, we feel a veritable stretching of
the mental leather, as it were ; our minds being held
back a space by the introduction of the word " long.'
This quatorzain ends :

Of smouldering infamy. Bow down in awe !

It is enough. The Gods are at feast. Withdraw ! ^

Again the same mental stress.

All the above are contrary to the rules of scansion,
yet nevertheless they are musical. And though in
" Rodin in Rime" perhaps Crowley slightly overdoes
this introduction of irregular lines, yet they add a
great charm, as they do in many of his other poems,
producing in their lingering pause or quick jump an
ecstatic spasm, if we may so call it, which renders so
many of these poems unique. Such as in " Styx" we
find:

' W. E. Henley, Rodin in Rime, vol. iii, p. 120. Compare
the following verse in Swinburne's poem, The Centenary of
the Battle of the Nile:

The strong and sunbright lie whose name was France
Arose against the sun of truth, whose glance

Laughed large from the eyes of England fierce as fire
Whence eyes wax blind that gaze in truth askance.
* Rodin in Rime, vol. iii, p. 119. ' Ibid.

THE LOOKING-GLASS 39

The fourth, to draw her kisses and to keep ;

The fifth, for love; the sixth, in sweet despair;

The seventh, to destroy us unaware;
The eighth, to dive within the infernal deep.'

"In" would scan better; but by replacing it by
"within" we can feel the dark waters close over us
as we are borne down their unfathomable depths.
Similarly in the following :

Aching with all the pangs of night

My shuddering body swoons ; my eyes

Absorb her eyelids' lazy light,
And read her bosom ..."

The extra half-step in "shuddering" in place of dis-
cordantly jarring on the metre produces a keener sense
of agony in the reader's mind than a word which
scanned correctly would do.

In the next passage, taken from " Tannhauser," we
find the introduction of a spondee carrying with it a
curious sensation of slowness :

Chaos, a speck ; and space, a span ;
Ruinous cycles fallen in,
And Darkness on the Deep of Time.
Murmurous voices call and climb ;
Faces, half-formed, arise ; and He
Looked from the shadow of His throne.
The curtain of Eternity ; '

whilst in the last verse of "The Palace of the World"
the sudden dropping of a whole foot produces with it
a sudden sense of finality :

' The Temple of the Holy Ghost, vol. i, p. 183.

' Jezebel, vol. i, p. 131.

' Tannhauser, vol. i, p. 251. (The italics are mine.)

40 THE STAR IN THE WEST

Thine be the king'dom ! Thine the power !

The g^lory triply thine !
Thine, through Eternity's swift hour,

Eternity, thy shrine —
Yea, by the holy lotus-flower,

Even mine ! '

Further on in the same series of poems a sudden
whirring- sense of madness is predated by introducing
the word " lunatic " into an otherwise regular line:

Silence, deep silence. Not a shudder stirs
The vast demesne of unforgetful space.

No comet's lunatic rush : no meteor whirs.
No star dares breathe. . . .^

Again, in such lines as :

Secure the sacred fastness of the soul,
Uniting self to the absolute, the whole,'

our ears tell us at once that the extra half-step is in-
tentionally introduced. Whilst in such a line as :

And loving servant of my lady and lord,*

they do not. The " y " in lady might by some be con-
sidered an admissible elision with the "and." But
I myself should not pass it, though in the following
I should :

Many the spirits broken for one man ;
Many the men that perish to create
One God the more ; many the weary and wan °

In the last line of the succeeding verse the metre (I
should say) is not unimpeachable :

' The Temple of the Holy Ghost, vol. i, p. 205.

" Ibid. vol. i, p. 209.

' Mysteries : Lyrical and Dramatic, vol. i, p. 107.

* Ibid. vol. i, p. 98.

' The Temple of the Holy Ghost, vol. i, p. 210.

THE LOOKING-GLASS 41

Lower, an ocean of flowers,

Trees that are warmer and leafier,
Starrier, sunnier hours

Spurning- the strain of all grief here,
Bringing a quiet delight to us, beyond our belief, here.*

Whilst in the next three cases I consider it distinctly
faulty :

I see the thin web binding me
With thirteen cords of unity
Toward the calm centre of the sea.^

Where larkspur and cornflower
Are blue with sunlight's hour,^

Ring out your frosty peal, and smite
Loud fingers on the harp, and touch
Lutes, and clear psalteries musical.
And all stringed instruments, to indite *

The first two of the above are quoted from poems
published in 1898, and the last from those published
a year later. I will not say that they are the only im-
perfections to be found throughout these works, but
I will say that there are very few others. And con-
sidering that Aleister Crowley has written about one
hundred thousand lines in the space of ten years, or
half the quantity produced by Robert Browning in
fifty-six, the fewness of imperfections in his work is
truly remarkable.

Let us now pass from what I may call the Poetic
Iconomachy to the Poetic Iconolatry of these poems ;

Mysteries: Lyrical and Dramatic, vol. i, p. 125.
Songs of the Spirit, vol. i, p. 31.
Mysteries : Lyrical and Dramatic, vol. i, p. 103.
Jephthah, vol. i, p. 74.

42 THE STAR IN THE WEST

from Aleister Crowley's war against poetic form, to
his adoration of poetic imagery; and then to the
keynote of the whole of his poetry, and, as we
shall presently see, his philosophy as well, namely —
Ecstasy.

In " Gargoyles ' we find several truly wonderful
picture poems. Thus in "The White Cat":

Hail, sweet my sister ! hail, adulterous spouse,

Gilded with passionate pomp, and gay with guilt:
Rioting, rioting in the dreary house

With blood and wine and roses splashed and spilt
About thy dabbling feet, and aching jaws

Whose tongue licks mine, twin asps like moons that curl.
Red moons of blood ! Whose catlike body claws.

Like a white swan raping a jet-black girl,
Mine, with hysteric laughter '

And the following four verses in " Saida " are
superb :

The spears of the night at her onset
Are lords of the day for a while.
The magical green of the sunset.
The magical blue of the Nile.

Afloat are the gales

In our slumberous sails
On the beautiful breast of the Nile.

We have swooned through the midday exhausted
By the lips — they are whips — of the sun,
The horizon befogged and befrosted
By the haze and the grays and the dun

Of the whirlings of sand

Let loose on the land
By the wind that is born of the sun.

Thrilled through to the marrow with heat
We abode (as we glode) on the river.
Every arrow he launched from his seat,

^ Gargoyles, vol. iii, p. 86.

THE LOOKING-GLASS 43

From the white inexhaustible quiver,

Smote us right through,

Smote us and slew,
As we rode on the rapturous river.

Sweet sleep is perfection of love.
To die into dreams of my lover,
To wake with his mouth like a dove
Kissing me over and over !

Better sleep so

Than be conscious, and know
How death hath a charm to discover.'

But not until we read " The Eyes of Pharaoh " do
we read one of the most astounding paintings in
words, I make bold to say, that has ever been written
in any language :

And death's insufferable perfume
Beat the black air with golden fans

As Turkis rip a Nubian's womb
With damascened yataghans.^

This one astonishing verse upsets the equilibrium of
the whole poem, as it would of any poem; for if the
remaining thirteen had been penned in an equivalent
vividness of colouring, the effect would have been one
of complete overpowerment rather than of a sudden
and dizzy joy.

As the aristocratic virtues of one century become
the democratic vices of the next, so do the noble
renderings of one age of literature become the hack-
neyed phraseology of the following, this being true
whether we are speaking of poetry or prose. Yet one
attribute alone remains ever youthful as the Ages roll
by into the aeons, and that is — Ecstasy; whether we

' Gargoyles, vol. iii, p. 94. ^ Ibid. vol. iii, p. 100.

44 THE STAR IN THE WEST

find it in the rapture of Love, the melody of Song, or
the fire of Deity, it is what Poe meant by " elevating
excitement," and as we have seen, it was because of
its absence that he attacked the Epic school of verse.

Ecstasy lies beyond our gnosis ; as we shall here-
after see, it carries us out of ourselves, beyond the
mere shell of existence, into the very depths of the
profound. For the fraction of a second the whole
ocean of our being is whirled through a narrow gorge,
then once again we are hurled forth into the eddying
cataracts of life, an essential spirit light gilding once
again the sepulchral abode of a corpse. For a moment
we behold God, face to face, but for a moment only,
then all again is night. Keats attained, and so did
Shelley and Browning. Read the last verses of the
"Prometheus Unbound" and "A Grammarian's
Funeral," and all will be plain; and it is this same
ecstasy that burns white in these two superb poems,
which flames a bright star of beauty guiding us on our
long journey across the hundred thousand leagues
of the empire of Crowley's pen. We find it shining
brightly over almost every page, a fact which renders
the task of quoting nigh endless. Already we have
cited a dozen or more examples. Volume I flames
like a subtly gemmed ring with the ecstasy of many
moments, and many of the following citations in this
essay will be both brilliant and flashing; and as are
the sides of the Heptagonal Vault, so also will be the
contents of these seven chapters. But here at least
we shall alone content ourselves with quoting from
one poem — "Orpheus," and then only loose from
the massive setting a few of its flashing stones.

In Book I the invocation of Venus is very fine. The
third verse being:

THE LOOKING-GLASS 45

Down to the loveless sea

Where lay Persephone
Violate, where the shade of earth is black,

Crystalline out of space

Flames the immortal face !
The glory of the comet-tailed track

Blinds all black earth with tears.

Silence awakes and hears
The music of thy moving come over the starry spheres. '

The song of "The Hours,'"' and "Spring,"' are
also magnificent, as are the Invocation of Hecate;"
the three Judges," and the Furies ; " the latter of which
is one of the most musical lyrics Crowley has as yet
written. The Song of Orpheus flashes and flames as
we read it:

The magical task and the labour is ended ;

The toils are unwoven, the battle is done ;
My lover comes back to my arms, to the splendid

Abyss of the air and abode of the sun.
The sword be assuaged, and the bow be unbended !

The labour is past, and the victory won.

The arrows of song through Hell cease to hurtle.

Away to the passionate gardens of Greece,
Where the thrush is awake, and the voice of the turtle

Is soft in the amorous places of peace,
And the tamarisk groves and the olive and myrtle

Stir ever with love and content and release.

O bountiful bowers and O beautiful gardens !

O isles in the azure Ionian deep !
Ere ripens the sun, ere the spring-wind hardens

Your fruits once again ye shall have me to keep.
The sleep-god laments, and the love-goddess pardons.

When love at the last sinks unweary to sleep.'

1 Orpheus, vol. iii, p. 168. ^ Ibid. vol. iii, p. 145.

^ Ibid. vol. iii, pp. 146, 147. * Ibid. vol. iii, p. 177.

' Ibid. vol. iii, pp. 182-187. ° Ibid. vol. iii, pp. 194-199.
' Ibid. vol. iii, p. 200.

46 THE STAR IN THE WEST

As also does the song of Orpheus :

O Hawk of g^old with power enwalled,
Whose face is like an emerald ;
Whose crown is indigo as night ;

Smaragdine snakes about thy brow
Twine, and the disc of flaming light

Is on thee, seated in the prow
Of the Sun's bark, enthroned above
With lapis-lazuli for love

And ruby for enormous force
Chosen to seat thee, thee girt round
With leopard's pell, and golden sound

Of planets choral in their course !

thou self-formulated sire !
Self-master of thy dam's desire !
Thine eyes blaze forth with fiery light ;

Thine heart a secret sun of flame !

1 adore the insuperable might :

I bow before the unspoken Name.

For I am Yesterday, and I

To-day, and I to-morrow, born
Now and again, on high, on high

Travelling on Dian's naked horn !
I am the Soul that doth create

The Gods, and all the kin of Breath.
I come from the sequestered state;

My birth is from the House of Death.

I have risen ! I have risen ! as a mighty hawk of gold !

From the golden egg I gather, and my wings the world enfold.

I alight in mighty splendour from the throned boats of light;

Companies of Spirits follow me ; adore the Lords of Night.

Yea, with gladness did they pasan, bowing low before my car.

In my ears their homage echoed from the sunrise to the star.

I have risen ! I am gathered as a lovely hawk-of gold,

I the first-born of the Mother in her ecstasy of old.

Lo ! I come to face the dweller in the sacred snake of Khem •

THE LOOKING-GLASS 47

Come to face the Babe and Lion, come to measure force with

them!
Ah ! these locks flow down, a river, as the earth's before the

Sun,
As the earth's before the sunset, and the God and I are One.
I who entered in a Fool, gain the God by clean endeavour;
I am shaped as men and women, fair for ever and for ever.^

Such is the living poetry that abides and ever lives
on, knowing no youth or age, alone an eternal man-
hood. Lavishly scattered, we find it throughout the
works before us ; in "Aceldama," "Mysteries: Lyrical
and Dramatic," "The Temple of the Holy Ghost,"
"Tannhauser," "Rosa Mundi," and "Alice." Ec-
stasy is the keynote here, as it is of all poetry, all
literature, — aye ! of all Life. Without it we cease to
be even animals — a dog will bay the moon — mere
lumps of sodden clay; with it a flaming crown of
glory, angel-voiced, singing amidst the stars the
anthem of Eternity.

' Orpheus, vol. iii, pp. 209, 210.

II

The Chapter known as

tibe IDirgin

In which chapter it is related how beauteous

and fair she was to behold, and with what

joyaunce and jollity she greeted her many

lovers, and how she fed off their kisses

and growing- bold was cast forth to

feed amongst the swine.

^be IDirain

" ' I ""O be a singer of sweet songs," is the great ideal
X Crowley has enshrined before him ; for varied
as his powers are, entwined with satire, philosophy and
mysticism, as a singer of lyrics and love-songs Aleister
Crowley remains unsurpassed, unrivalled, among the
host of present-day poets. His thoughts are as subtle,
his imagination as gorgeous, his melodies as charming
as those of Shelley himself; soft as a summer breeze,
fresh as the dawn in May, sunny as a June day, and
then furious with burning passion and vitriolic lust.
So closely interwoven in spirit are the true lyrics with
the remainder of his amatory poetry, that it would be
dangerous to attempt to separate them, and such an
attempt would almost certainly lead to repetition or
a breaking of the chain of psychosexual sensations,
dimming that lustre which thrills through these mag-
nificent verses, from the chaste kiss of a mother to
the Phaedrian embrace of a Sadistic sow.

In "Why Jesus Wept," we have the ephemeral
and headstrong passion of youth; whilst in "The Tale
of Archais " we find it burning only as a pure and
lambent flame, overcoming all adversity, sacrificing
self-love and even self-honour to attain the ideal of its
purpose.

Love is the predominant power in the universe; over
and over again we shall find this enforced, greater than
fame, than wealth, than glory, greater than knowledge.

52 THE STAR IN THE WEST

greater than wisdom, greater than the power of the
Gods themselves; for they too must worship at the
shrine of Love, the shrine of the great World Mother,
the mystic Isis, goddess of beauty, mother of love,
queen of laughter, mistress of pleasure. ' ' / am all that
has been, that shall be, and none among mortals has
hitherto taken off my veil." '

Innocent friendship or platonic love can never be a
success where the rapture of a kiss is burning on the
lips of two lovers; the first spells ignorance and the
second failure, for love will out, and if not as a limpid
and sparkling stream, then as a turbid and roaring
torrent, reckless and horrible. This extraordinary
phase of diverted ^ love is very strongly illustrated in
"The Fatal Force," "The Mother's Tragedy," and
also in "Jezebel"; not so in "Tannhauser" and
" The Nameless Quest," where love is not restrained,
but rather cramped by the gnostic idea of evil in the
objective. This curious idea we will go into more fully
later on, at present we shall content ourselves in deal-
ing with the first phase of Love — love in youth.

In "Why Jesus Wept," which is a satirical serio-
comedy, mingled with heterodox ribaldry, and a shrewd
and sweeping cynicism on the utter rottenness of social
life, we find love in youth depicted in the person of
Sir Percy Percival, aged sixteen. The first effusion of
puberty is described in the following three lines:

. , . what shall slake
This terrible thirst,
This torment accurst? '

' Inscribed on the statue of the Goddess.
^ "Perverted" I object to here, as it is but a synonym of
' converted ' from a different point of view.
' Why Jesus Wept, vol. iii, p. 28.

THE VIRGIN 53

This, as is usually the case, finds an outlet in the
first pretty maid who happens to cross youth's burning-
path, and in this case the fairdamozel is Molly Tyson,
and the first scene of their meeting is most typical :

Sir Percy. Ah, love, love, how I love you. This is the
world ! Love ! Love ! I love you so, my darling. Oh my
white golden heart of glory ! '

Eternity is moulded in form of her kiss, and even if
" Hell belch its monsters one by one to stop the way!
I would be there " cries Sir Percy as he and Molly rush
backwards and forwards kissing and kissing before
they can finally part. And no sooner has he parted
with her, having sworn eternal love and to meet her
at moonrise, than he stumbles across a bedizened hag
of sixty-three (society), and in ten minutes, because
she calls herself " the wretchedest girl on the wide
earth," discovers " she is most beautiful "; " How
she speaks! It is indeed an angel singing," and asks
if he may call her Angela, and forgets his poor village
girl, and utterly overcome when she says, ("I am
a poor and simple girl, and my eyes are aching with
the sight of you, and my lips are mad to kiss you!")
falls into her arms learning his first great lesson; for
as Angela says, "it is dangerous as well as cruel to
leave a lover standing."

To wake again to all the effervesence of efflorescent
youth :

Awake! awake!

There is a secret in our subtle union

That masters the grey snake.

Awake, O Love ! and let me drink my fill

Of thee — and thou of me ! ^

His subtle union, however, is soon about to vanish,
' Why Jesus Wept, vol. iii, p. 30. " Ibid. vol. iii, p. 40.

54 THE STAR IN THE WEST

for Angela in a day or so will have just about had her
fill:

Angela. Die, then, and kiss me dead!
Sir Percy. I die ! I die !
Angela. Thy flower-life is shed
Into eternity,
A waveless lake.'

He sleeps, and she awake becomes somewhat weary
of these "jejune platitudes, "these "ululations of pre-
posterous puberty," these very "eructations of ginger-
bread " and " flatulence of calf-sickness. "° Soon he is
kicked flying out of her ladyship's bed, and here we
must leave him for a time to meet him again and his
first love Molly further on, though not under the sun-
shine of youthful amorosis.

A different phase and a much more pleasing one of
the impulsiveness of youthful love is given us in that
glowing story ' ' The Tale of Archais. " There are many
mysteries in this poem. Charicles the desire striving
after Archais the ideal, failing, and the ideal seeking
the lost desire; but outwardly we have, and visible to
all, a true poem of the self-sacrifice of Love, and as
such I think we should principally read it, the poetry
of life and hope, and not the mystic throbs of some
deep aspiration.

Charicles and Archais are the golden children of the
Tree of Life; she is under the curse of Jove — as all
pure love has been under the anathema of some god —
and he, blinded by his love, sets the mystic key in the
secret lock, opening to his desire the hidden corridor
of knowledge ; the spell falls hissing as a snake. The
picture of their meeting is beautiful indeed. Thus we
find Archais :

' Why Jesus Wept, vol. iii, p. 41. ^ Ibid. vol. iii, p. 41.

THE VIRGIN 55

She lay within the water, and the sun

Made golden with his pleasure every one

Of small cool ripples that surround her throat,

Mix with her curls, and catch the hands that float

Like water-lilies on the wave. '

Chance bowed herself across the sunny bars.

And watched where through the silence of the lawn

Came Charicles, the darling of the dawn,

Slowly, and to his steps took little heed ;

He came towards the pool, his god-wrought reed

Shrilling dim visions of things glorious,

And saw the maiden, that disported thus.

And worshipped. . . '

As Percy, "a moment, and he flashed towards her
side." He clasps her to his breast, kisses her, is dis-
mayed :

Her perfect eyelids drooped, her warm cheek paled,

A tear stole over it.'

He is tender, pitiful, this is no Angela.

My perfect love, O love ! for strange and dread
Delights consume me ; I am as one dead
Beating at Heaven's gate with nerveless wing."

Charicles then sings the rather mystic song which opens
as follows :

Man's days are dim, his deeds are dust.

His span is but a little space.
He lusts to live, he lives to lust.
His soul is barren of love or trust.
His heart is hopeless, seeing he must
Perish, and leave no trace. '

He bids her gaze into his eyes,

With love, my cheeks with passion burn —
As thy clear eyes may well discern
By gazing into mine. °

' The Tale of Archais, vol. i, p. 7. ^ Ibid. vol. i, p. 8.

" Ibid. vol. i, p. 8. * IbU. vol. i, p. 8.

' Ibid. vol. i, p. 9. ° Ibid. vol. i, p. 9.

56 THE STAR IN THE WEST

Who could withstand the sweet witchery of such a
lover's wooing? least of all Archais; her breast, re-
luctant yet helpless, heaves with a soft passion, no wise
understood, her pulse quickens, she speaks, he is en-
thralled:

the piercing flame
Of love struck through him, till his tortured mind
Drove his young limbs, the wolf that hunts the hind,
Far through the forest. , . . '

And then again bursts from his lips the enraptured
song:

Ere the grape of joy is golden

With the summer and the sun,
Ere the maidens unbeholden

Gather one by one.
To the vineyard comes the shower,
No sweet rain to fresh the flower.

But the thunder rain that cleaves,

Rends and ruins tender leaves.

Ere the crimson lips have planted

Paler roses, warmer grapes,
Ere the maiden breasts have panted,

And the sunny shapes
Flit around to bless the hour.
Comes men know not what false flower :

Ere the cup is drained, the wine

Grows unsweet, that was divine.^

These last two lines contain the whole secret of this
story. The beauty of the clinging love of childhood
is tinged with a glowing desire, the pink desire of the
bud bursts into the passionate crimson of the rose, and

^ The Tale of Archais, vol. i, p. 9.
'^ Ibid. vol. i, pp. 9, 10.

THE VIRGIN 57

as in "Alice," "The dove gave place a moment to the
swine ; " — and yet hardly so ! the pure desire of man
and woman in whatever state of life, the weaving of
the golden web of twain into one entity, is not lust,
never was lust, never will be lust.

According to the conventional meaning of that word,
lust expresses something unhealthy, unclean; and the
love Charicles bore Archais was certainly not that.
This love, to use a good old English word, was a
"lusty" love, that is a healthy love, and not a lustful
or perverted desire. The beauty of nature, the beauty
of living, and above all the bright beauty of Archais;
intoxicated him ; before him whirled visions of loveli-
ness, and as her eyes reflected the passion of his own,
as they smiled back on him all the love he bore her,
yielding, he caught her up as a flame would another,
and the ' ' iron rod of law " grew misty, for they were
one, one in body, mind and soul; alone for that moment,
sole inhabitants of this World — Infinite. The moment
is over, the girl rises up a woman, the wreath of lilies
is now a crown of roses, she has plucked the golden
fruit of Eden, henceforth she is a priestess of Sorrow;
the crushed and bruised flowers cry to her "such as
we were we are not, such as thou wert thou canst
never be again." The horrid spell falls upon her, and
she writhes from his arms a snake.

Charicles trembling, fearful, at last becomes aware
that fate has overtaken them; then all the fury of
manhood rises in him:

Erect, sublime, he swore so fierce an oath
That the sea flashed with blasphemy, and loath
Black thunders broke from out the shuddering- deep.
He swore again, and from its century's sleep
Earthquake arose, and rocked and raved and roared.

S8 THE STAR IN THE WEST

He swore the third time. But that Heaven's Lord
Curbed their black wrath, the stars of Heaven's vault
Had rushed to whelm the sun with vehement assault.^

Such is the power of Love, undaunted, infuriated
in the cause of Freedom, Justice, and Truth. Charicles
plunges into the waves of destiny, "And with his
strenuous hands the emerald water gripped." Onward
he swims striving against Poseidon, god of the ocean,
who heaps the sea foam against him, as he makes for
the Paphian isle to seek aid from the goddess of Love;
and in his blinding anger he sees her not, though she
is by his side journeying homeward from Rome. She
raises the swimmer to her pearly car and carries him
to her fair home, where in the following beautiful
symbolic action she promises to restore him his lost
love — Archais.

Then Aphrodite loosed a snake of gold
From her arm's whiteness, and upon his wrist
Clasped it. Its glittering eyes of amethyst
Fascinate him. " Even so," the goddess cried,
' ' I will bind on thy arm the serpent bride
Freed from her fate, and promise by this kiss
The warmer kisses of thy Archais. " ^

' The Tale of Archais, vol. i, p. 12. Cf. the Qabalistic
Dogma of Pistorius: "Schema misericordiam dicit, sed et
judicium." The Infinite Being when exercising his power upon
the finite must necessarily chastise to correct and not to avenge
himself. The strength of the sin does not exceed that of the
sinner, and if the punishment be greater than the offence, he
who inflicts it becomes executioner and is the real criminal
who is wholly inexcusable, and himself alone deserving of
eternal punishment. Any being who is tortured above measure,
enlarged by an infinitude of suffering, would become God, and
this is what the ancients represented in the myth of Prometheus,
immortalized by the devouring vulture, and destined to dethrone
Jupiter. — The Mysteries of Magic, p. 120.

' The Tale of Archais, vol. i, pp. 13, 14.

THE VIRGIN 59

The handmaidens of Aphrodite gather round them,
and their silver voices rise in one of those sweet clear
songs, already so familiar to our ears, set like a gem
in the gold of the narrative. The following rondel I
choose for its simplicity and sweetness:

Sing, little bird, it is dawn ;
Cry! with the day the woods ring-;
Now in the blush of the morn.
Sing!

Love doth enchain me and cling,

Love, of the breeze that is born,
Love, with the breeze that takes wing.

Love that is lighter than scorn.
Love that is strong as a king.
Love, through the gate that is horn,
Sing!,,!

The anger of Zeus is aroused. Aphrodite bids
Charicles flee, but his passion is too great, he defies
the powers. (They are only gods; would he have
succeeded had they been Grundy?) The curse of Zeus
is reversed:

His form did change, and, writhing from her clasp,
Fled hissing outward, a more hateful asp
Than India breeds to-day.

. . . till day
Dropped her blue pinions, and the night drew on,
And sable clouds banked out the weary sun.^

The whole course of events is now reversed, Char-
icles a venomous adder, Archais once again her own
divine and glorious self. And this is how we find her
the second time:

The Tale of Archais, vol. i, p. 14.
^ Ibid. vol. i, p. 16.

6o THE STAR IN THE WEST

It was a pinnacle of ivory

Whereon she stood, the loftiest of three fangs

Thrust up by raagfic, in the direst pangs

Of Earth, when Earth was yet a whirling cloud

Of fire and adamant, a ceaseless crowd

Of rushing atoms roaring into space.

Driven by demons from before the Face.^

So beautiful was she, that "the sun forgot his
chariot, nor would set"; and in this mystic hour, the
marriage of Day and Night, she prayed fervently to
Aphrodite, fond goddess of lovers, and there amidst
the thunder-smitten stone, beautiful and piteous, she
waited, longing for that strong desire of love that had
been so rudely snatched from her. Again, Love in
the form of Aphrodite listens to her prayer, but is
helpless to help her till she has sought aid from the
lewd city of Aphaca, where Lust in the grim shape of
Priapus dwelt.

The large-lipped drawn-out grinning of that court
That mouthed and gibbered in their swinish sport. ^

This curious duality of Love and Lust, or better, of
Virtue and Vice, we shall attempt to explain more
fully when we deal with the philosophy of Aleister
Crowley.

From Priapus, Phallommeda gains her necessary in-
formation, and then seeking Charicles, appears first
as an old hag, soon to change again into her own
brilliant form, thus symbolizing the joy she brought
him from out the hideousness of his fate; for during
the day he should assume the form of the divinest of
divine maidens, and only at the passionate hour of
noon, crawl away before the full glory of the sun a

' The Tale of Archais, vol. i, p. 17.
* Ibid. vol. i, p. 19.

THE VIRGIN 6i

wrig-giing serpent. She bids him seek Zeus, and
leaves the rest to him. "To the lascivious shade of
Ida's deep recesses " he wends his way:

So iair, her image in the brook might make
A passionless old god his hunger slake
By plunging in the waters, though he knew
His drowning body drowned her image too.'

There he, or now she, meets the great god wander-
ing through the green trees and the cool groves, as
Jahveh was wont once to do. Amidst those shades of
Ida, where Paris adjudged the prize of beauty, over-
looking the blue Hellespont, the greatest sacrifice,
and thereby the purest that love can make, was to be
demanded, and freely given — the sacrifice of a woman's
honour to save her lover; in fact to become a prosti-
tute in body, and a virgin in spirit. He, Zeus, is
" weary of women's old lascivious breed," and of " the
large luxurious lips of Ganymede." No freshness, no
restraint, no virgin breast, no lips " without a taint
of lewd imagining," all the nymphs of those green
wooded slopes, all are as brazen and cold as the
meretrices of a suburrian lupanar, the fire of love
having burnt itself out to the ashen lassitude of satiety.
At length the god finds her asleep under some shady
tree, and creeps towards her — little loath

To waken her caresses, and let noon
Fade into midnight in the amorous swoon.^

His voluptuous lips touch her smooth cheek, she
wakes, she flees, she is caught; "panting," "timid,"
" tremulous":

1 The Tale of Archais. vol. i, p. 21.
^ Ibid. vol. i, p. 21.

62 THE STAR IN THE WEST

And he with open lips voluptuous

Closed her sweet mouth with kisses, and so pressed

Her sobbing bosom with a manlier breast

That . . .1

She submits, not to the god, but to the man.
Within the god, the godhood vanishes; for the power
of love rules all, and the god once again becomes in-
carnated in the form of a divine man.^

So the morning past
And found them linked inexorably fast
Each in the other's arms. Their lips are wed
To drink the breezes from the fountain-head
Of lovers' breath. ^

Then all her senses leap to the melodious song of
Zeus, a divine lyric; the following are two of its seven
beautiful verses:

O lamp of love !
The hissing spray shall jet thee with desire

And foaming fire,

And fire from thee shall move
Her spirit to devour,
And fuse and mingle us in one transcendent hour.

Godhead is less
Than mortal love, the garland of the spheres.

Than those sweet tears

That yield no bitterness
To the luxurious cries
That love shrills out in death, that murmur when love dies.*

The hour of noon approaches, it falls, and the curse
resumes its sway ; a fiery snake winds its coils round
the sleeping god, and hisses in his ear, "awake!"

' The Tale of Archais, vol. i, p. 22.

' Eros (yi.) descending upon God (m n\), transforms God into
(nmT.) Christ.

" The Tale of Archais, vol. i, p. 22. * /hid. vol. i, p. 2'i.

THE VIRGIN 63

The gfod has fallen, the god is caught, caught and
bound in the lusts of the manhood he assumed. No
Galilean is he to be crucified for his own or others'
sins, and he wins his freedom at the price of Charicles'
liberty. Nature breaks into a welcome chant of joy,
the lovers are reunited, the men's praise is for Archais,
and the eyes of the maidens are fixed on Charicles.
The tale is nearly ended, the lovers wend their way
through the joyous throng midst song and chorus,
then from the lips of Archais rises :

Light and dark are wed together

Into golden weather :
Sun and moon have kissed, and built

Palaces star-gilt
Whence a crystal stream of joy, love's eternal wine, is spilt.'

Such is one of the most pleasing of Aleister Crowley's
poems ; touched by the genuine breath of adoration
for the beautiful, a jewel set in fiery gold, a crimson
sash embroidered with the pearls of the glowing
orient ; Archais is one of the tenderest and most
touching of women, wholly pure, not like Molly
Tyson, who afterwards fell to the lot of a worldly old
lecher. The rosy couch of her first fiery experience
soon withered to a thorny briar bed, as it has for
most of us. Her curse was a god's, Molly's Society's
— poor Molly! Charicles' love was the love of the
hurricane, which carries all before it, typhoonic; he
knew no fears, no bonds, he cursed the god who had
defrauded him of his loved one; and plunged un-
daunted into the ocean of adversity ; to win back their
former state he sacrificed himself. He was no Sir
Percy, flatulent with wind, who could not tell a harlot

^ The Tale of Archais, vol. i, p. 24.

64 THE STAR IN THE WEST

from a virgin; falling at once a prey to a bedizened
old prostitute of sixty-three.

Those who should think the passion displayed in
this tale as unbecoming and lustful, must indeed have
minds composed of dung and cantharides, disappointed
sterile old maids, or sated old matrons, pornophobics
of the worst description. We know well the class,
half Exeter Hall, half Empire Music-hall; " dou^e "
(as a charming little French brochure describes one
of this type), " du plus voluptueux temperament
courut longtemps les aventures . . . mais ses ans et
le grand usage altdr^rent ses charmes, et elle prit le
parti ordinaire, de donner k Dieu ce qu'elle ne pouvait
plus offrir aux hommes, et pleura dans I'hypocrisie
trente ans d'amour et de plaisir." We know the
type well, and so does Aleister Crowley ; his Angela,
before she fell into the boiling sulphuric acid, which
was being prepared to remove her enamel, was presi-
dent of a Zenana Mission.

Love is, as must now be apparent, an all engross-
ing theme in the poetry of Aleister Crowley, every
phase almost meeting with an illustration. We have
seen the flatulent love of youth, and its counterpart
in the divine poetic sincerity of Charicles and Archais ;
we will now view it in its maturer form, and firstly,
in the form of true and sincere love, unconventional
and pure, whether under the bond of marriage, or
under the boundless bond of free love, between two
souls of similar affinity. True love is a pure, unal-
loyed attraction, urging two souls from their inherited
duality into their inherent oneness, that all are cap-
able of attaining, and yet so few attain ; and it is on
account of the fewness of its adepts, that the magic
of their worship has become to the clouded eyes of

THE VIRGIN 65

the many a heinous offence, reflecting a light that
they cannot find in their gloomy atmosphere.

Laws are the concrete opinions of the many, morals
the abstract sensations of the few. Outside ourselves
ethics do not exist, for they are the great faculty of
sentient existence. The law of the survival of the
fittest is not moral, it is essential ; but, manifested
through reason it becomes ethical. As regards the
aspirations of the sexes, nature cares little whether
John loves Ann or Mary. Man, however, cares much.
John is not married, Ann is ; Nature implants a similar
affinity in both, and they verge towards their own mag-
netic centre. Nature says ' ' unite ! " Man, however,
thinks otherwise and so builds up a stout abatis out
of the dead bones of unreasoning ages, fencing Ann
in ; and even if John does surmount this formidable
obstacle, a moral fougasse awaits for his impetuous
footstep, which will morally blow him to smithereens.
Again, John is unmarried, and Mary is in a similar
state of bliss, their affinities repel and do not attract :
Nature says "keep apart!"; man says "I would
rather see you unite with Mary than I would with
Ann, affinities be damned ! " They unite, and axiom-
atize the postulate of Hell. Nature now says " part ! "
man says "Oh! no you don't." Around them are
then speedily constructed such labyrinthine entangle-
ments, that few find their way out, and still fewer
attempt so difficult a task — hence Churches and
Brothels. If John, however, does not marry Mary,
Ann squalls, but as the jailer can always let himself
out of the prison, so can man, if he does not drop his
keys through some matrimonial grating. Ann then
locks up Mary in that Bastille of despair which is
called Piccadilly (this is no paradox) — hence prudes

66 THE STAR IN THE WEST

and nymphs. Thus Nature is scouted and thumped
on the nose because she is essential, and man is en-
throned in her stead and smacked on the back be-
cause he happens to be moral — hence Universities
and Lunatic asylums.

In Love, mankind eternally verges between folly
and knavery, because man is a non-essential being,
and Nature an un-moral power.

But before we enter on the above idea as demon-
strated in the poems of Aleister Crowley, it will be
necessary to elucidate matters, and first to enter on
a brief description of the Essential and the Moral ;
showing that man as usual has got hold of "the
muddy end of the stick ; " that the majority of the
human species live in a state of purulent hypocrisy
and mental indolence, and that the minority should
consider themselves exceptionally fortunate if they
save their souls from incarceration in the bolgia of
conventional respectability.

Aleister Crowley's gospel of Love is the gospel of
Freedom. As love is one of those particular qualities
that cannot possibly thrive under the perception of
restraint, so can it only bloom in perfect freedom,
whether legalized or not ; all other forms are Lust.

Nature is the All-perfect, she is existence taken as
a totality, and everything being a part of her, con-
sequently is subject to her government. The inorganic,
and what we choose to call the organic, are her two
greatest manifestations. Some consider these two as
definitely separate ; others that the organic is but a
higher form of the inorganic ; and others again that
both are illusions, and that Reality, as we suppose it
materially to be, does not exist outside our own
minds. We do not intend to enter here the illusive

THE VIRGIN 67

paths of Idealism ; but we might add, from a strictly
logical point of view, that the latter system has much
to support it. In all and every one of us lies a certain
individual desire, which is strictly subjective, in the
individual it is called character, in the nation govern-
ment. The laws of a country are the compilation of
a series of individual characterizations, a series of
inner reflections of the outer object. In each one of
us there is a slight difference of eff"ect, and this varia-
tion results in the survival of the fittest intellect. Now
the essential difference between the spirit of an in-
dividual and that of a nation is this : the first acts
intuitively, the second mechanically ; the former pro-
pels the latter, whilst the latter reacts as a drag on
the former. If the former is in a healthy state so will
the latter be ; if the latter becomes corrupt it will then
react and contaminate the former. This is the law of
all Form — i.e., Government — and Reform.

The outlaw of to-day was the citizen of yesterday,
so the law of to-day will become the crime of to-
morrow.

Man being inherently lazy, and hence conservative,
this power is forever reacting on him, and binding him
down to a government unsuited to his times, and it
is this power that he has chosen to call — the Moral
code ; notwithstanding the fact that it is not based in
any way on the perceptions he has obtained from
Nature's code as it now is reflected, but on that re-
flection which was obtained by his ancestors, a far
less worthy appreciation. And in this inherent con-
servativeness and horror of change lie most of the
tragedies of love; for man trying to quench the
natural flame of his desires in a torrent of chilly and
criminal atavism, merely floods the virtuous path.

68 THE STAR IN THE WEST

leaving the by-ways of vice high and dry, inviting,
crying to the sated wanderer.

Man lives by paradoxes and contraries ; martyrs
and tortures himself, building around him lofty re-
strictions bristling with moral /rises, and broken
ethical beer-bottles, digging deep trenches around
his joys, and then filling them with the tears of ex-
asperation at his lot. All is either monopoly, or
slavery, or taboo. Free in his actions he conceived
law and solicitors ; free in his aspirations, religion and
priests ; free in his affections, marriage and wives.
Inwardly he agrees that marriage is a success only
when it comprises a total unison of mind, body and
soul, of sympathies and passions ; outwardly that it
is a perpetual seal, sealed by God. Dr. Maudsley
once said, ' ' No one can escape the tyranny of his
organization," but woe to the man who cannot dis-
semble that he can ! Marriage, the hackneyed sexual
union, is a lie to love, a legalizing of prostitution, an
abortive horror, over which broods the grinning form
of the Jew-God — God of lechers and harlots, of David
and Rahab. What sight more truly pitiable than to be-
hold the tender heart of some young girl, or the ardent
spirit of another, cramped by this unnatural bond, and
denied the joys of a beneficent Nature, that yearning
to love and be loved. But not with impunity do we thus
triumph over our natures ; love cannot be so rudely sup-
pressed ; the primary want of our being must inevitably
conquer. Looking back on history we find few parallels
to the general lust of the present day. Two thousand
years of the Cross have to-day left as token of its mor-
ality 80,000 prostitutes on the London streets alone.'

' In 1861 Henry Mayhew stated that the assumed number of
prostitutes in London was about 80,000. And further adds :

THE VIRGIN 69

' ' Can that have been human ? " I see you point through
the drizzling night to a cramped and shivering form.
Can that have been a woman ? That living death, de-
graded by crime, brutalized by vice, vitiated, unsouled ;
lower than a slave, worse than a dog ; spurned by
man, shunned by woman, a human wreck, a growing
horror? Even so, once a smiling girl, sweet as a rose,
pure as a lily ; now the bedraggled gin-sodden har-
ridan. O ! marriage, thy name is Failure : O ! priest,
what hast thou done ? Cramped the human mind, be-
trayed thy trust, sacrificed love on the altar of Mam-
mon, leaving the heart as a blighted flower, the soul
as a hollow shell, void, execrable.

Even love is sold, the solace of all woe

Is turned to deadliest ag'ony, old age

Shivers in selfish beauty's loathing arms

And youth's corrupted impulses prepare

A life of horror from the blighting bane

Of commerce ; whilst the pestilence that springs

From unenjoying sensualism, has filled

All human life with hydra-headed woes.

So sang Shelley. Now let us turn to Aleister
Crowley, and we shall find his ideal no less great,
noble and true than that of Shelley's, the divinest
of the poets and pioneers of Truth, Freedom, and
Beauty.

Love is the finding in others what others cannot
find in them, and it is of two degrees. The love of a
mother towards her child; and the love of man and

"large as this total may appear, it is not improbable that it is
below the reality than above it. One thing is certain — if it be
an exaggerated statement — that the real number is swollen
every succeeding year, for prostitution is an inevitable attend-
ant upon extended civilization and increased population." —
London Labour and London Poor, p. 213.

70 THE STAR IN THE WEST

woman towards woman and man. The first is gener-
ally considered to be purer and more ideal, but this
idea has only grown out of man's entire ignorance
regarding the physical relationships. The mother is
in no way purer than the wife, neither is the virgin
purer than the mother. The truest definition of chas-
tity is that as given by Benjamin Franklin, which de-
fines chastity as ' ' the regulated and strictly temperate
satisfaction without injury to others, of those desires
which are natural to all healthy adult beings."^ The
reason for this idea of uncleanliness though certainly
obscure is traceable more particularly to the utter
mystery man saw in this supreme function, and also,
that all hygienic laws being unknown to him, any
disease resulting from the act was attributed indirectly
to the woman — instead of to his own want of know-
ledge — and directly to the supernatural manifesting
its wrath through her as a medium; for the super-
natural to primitive man's understanding invariably
took the shape of malevolent and not benevolent
powers. This and the periodic functions of the
woman, as well as, as Westermarck says, "the
instinctive feeling against intercourse between mem-
bers of the same family or household," developed the
conception of uncleanliness in an act which has been
rightly stated by Geoffrey Mortimer as being "the

' A disciple of Pythagoras once asked him, when was it
permitted him to cohabit with his wife ? To which that philo-
sopher replied: "When you are tired of resting."

Th^ano, wife of Pythagoras, was also once asked: "How
long does it take for a woman to be purified who has known a
man?" To which she answered: " If it is with her husband,
she is purified by the act, if with another she is for ever defiled."
For it is not marriage which sanctifies love, but love which
justifies marriage. — Edouard Schure.

THE VIRGIN 71

eternal symbol of love and life, and the purest of
human joys," and which act being attributed to
supernatural powers came under the authority of
religion, and fell into the hands of an interested
priesthood, giving them an immense power over
women, and through women over men ; an influence
that has been exercised in every land, and every age,
by these spiritual leaders: an influence by which they
have in so many cases ruled the minds of men, and
by which for so many centuries they have blighted the
happiest prospects of many a human heart. But surely
now that we have reached the twentieth century,
thousands and thousands of years since these primi-
tive times, should we not shake off' these trammels of
infant thought, and, assuming our manhood, decry an
ideal that is not only brutal but absurd ; instead of
reverencing it because of its great antiquity, or because
of our conservative sympathies with the past days of
our fathers. Woman is as clean as man, and a wife
married or unmarried as pure as any virgin. Genera-
tion is no more filthy than alimentation; both are
necessary, both are accompanied by natural appetites;
the one maintains the individual, the other the race;
both may be carried to extremes, both may become
lusts.

The world is ever progressing onward, and we must
progress with it, or else stagnation and retrogression
will set in ; and in these competitive times the latter
two spell social and moral death. What was good
yesterday may be bad to-day, and what is good to-day
may be evil to-morrow. What the ultimate end will
be, none can tell, for it lies "behind the veil"; but
what we must do is very certain, very definite, very
sure. We must ameliorate our lot, not by the ephemeral

72 THE STAR IN THE WEST

laws of the dead, but through the needs and wants of
the living, on the solid foundation of the truest possible
morality, based on Nature, and manifested to us
through our divine powers of reason. And much of
this new morality do we find in the love-gospel of
Aleister Crowley.

First turning to the love incarnate in motherhood,
we find a touching case in the picture of Cora in " The
Mother's Tragedy." Cora Vavasour, late of the halls,
yet as true and noble a woman as ever lived, a type
of woman that, thank Heaven, is not so uncommon
among those whom ,the prudes call fallen classes.
Cora was scarcely, however, one of these; living in
luxury she tried to bury the recurring past, " Old
hours of horror," and she trusted that "God hath
made smooth the road beneath the hearse " of her
"forgetful age."

Let me not shrink ! Truth always purifies.

One night I stepped up tremulous on the stage,

Sang something, found my senses afterward

Only to that intolerable sound

Of terrible applause. They shook the sky

With calling me to answer. And I lay —

A storm of weeping swept across my frame —

Till the polite, the hateful Manager

Led me to face a nation's lunatic

Roar of delight!'

That was the beginning, but she soon got over that
"and over — yes! the other thing."

She fell sacrificed before Mammon, loved opulence,
was quoted on the Stock Exchange, became the toy
of the " prurient licksores of society" till her bastard
child was born.

' The Mother's Tragedy, vol. i, p. 157.

THE VIRGIN 73

Childbirth sobered me.
I loved the child^ the only human love
I ever tasted, and I sacrificed
The popularity, the infamy.
Of my old life ; I sought another world.
I "got religion" — how I hate the phrase! —
So jest the matron newspapers. . . .

For I will do without a mother's name
If only I may keep a son's love still ! '

It is not here that we can enter on the fearful
tragedy of these short dozen pages, suffice it to say,
that it was that of Phaedra and Hippolytus, the sexes
however being reversed. Shamed, insulted by her son,
she still dares kiss him:

Why I dare
Now take your head between my hands and kiss
Your forehead with these shameful lips of mine,
These harlot lips, and kiss you unashamed ? ^

Outraged, ravished by the offspring of her vice, yet
child of her heart, she still can say as she sees him
stand before her, a fiendish monster, with the bloody
razor with which he has just slain Madeline, a pure
and innocent girl:

Kill yourself.

Such was her love, her duty to her motherhood; very
different indeed was the love of Ratoum. But anon.

Another picture of maternal affection, this time
more musical, we find in "The Spring after," of
" Mysteries: Lyrical and Dramatic " :

No smallest cloud between me and my bride
Came like a little mist ; one tender fear,
Too sweet to speak of, closed the dying year

^ The Mother's Tragedy, vol. i, p. 157.
Ibid. vol. i, p. 161.

74 THE STAR IN THE WEST

With love more perfect, for its purple root
Might blossom outward to the snowy fruit
Whose bloom to-night lay sleeping on her breast.'

True love, the love of self in the soul of another, the
poet paints very beautifully in the following charming
lines :

Do you recall? Could I forget?
How once the full moon shone above.
Over the houses, and we let
Loose rein upon the steeds of love? ■
How kisses fled to kisses, rain
Of fiery dew upon the soul
Kindled, till ecstasy was pain ;
Desire, delight : and swift control
Leapt from the lightning, as the cloud
Disparted, rended, from us twain,
And we were one : "

This melting of the I in you, is the only true possible
form of marriage, and the only form that can exalt it
over the prostitution of the monde and demi-monde;
for it matters little if a woman sell her body for a five
pound note, or for a five million pound dot. The man
who in his turn marries a woman for her wealth is
as foul a male prostitute as ever shrieked his lewd
obscenities in the street of Sodom, and down the by-
ways of Gibeah. Tannhauser expresses the whole
celebration of this union in two pregnant lines :

That is true marriage, in my estimate.
Aspire together to one Deity?
Yes!'

Or again in the song of Nuith :

^ Mysteries : Lyrical and Dramatic, vol. i, p. 94.
^ Star and Garter, vol. iii, p. 13.
' Tannhauser, vol. i, p. 259.

THE VIRGIN 75

We are lulled by the whirr of the stars ;

We are fanned by the whisper, the wind ;
We are locked in unbreakable bars,
The love of the spirit and mind.
The infinite powers
Of rapture are ours ;
We are one, and our kisses are kind.'

A true wife, that is a woman whose very soul
palpitates in harmony with that of her husband or
lover, is the greatest joy of life. Burns sang :

To make a happy fireside clime

For weans and wife,
Is the true pathos and sublime

Of human life.

And from the other side of the sphere the melodious
lines of Kalidasa reverberate with the same perfection
of pure wifehood. In the Raghuvangha the step-
mothers of Rama greet Sita thus, when she blames
herself for the misfortunes which befell her husband :

Dear daughter, rise !
(So said they) " 'Tis thy spotless life alone
That brought thy Lord and Lakshman through their toils
Triumphant." Then with loving words and true
They praised her, worthy wife of worthy Lord.

What a melody lives in those words, " 'Twas thy
spotless life alone." Rama through all his misfor-
tunes, through all the snares of life, finds ultimately
that all his woes are but a teardrop to be swallowed
up in that boundless ocean of love — the heart of a
chaste and loving wife. And so did Ahinoam in
Jephthah when he said:

And my wife's eyes were welcome more desired

Than chains of roses, and the song of children.

And swinging palm branches, and milk-white-elders.^

1 Orpheus, vol. iii, p. 218. ^ Jephthah, vol. i, p. 82.

76 THE STAR IN THE WEST

No thunderous note (so common in the poems of
Crowley) lies in the above three lines, to roll on into
the stillness of Immensity; it is but the song of the
nightingale by the rill of life. Here as a vision we see
a fair form embroidering the web of existence with
the flowers that grow on the banks of life's flowing
stream, collecting as she works the stray threads of
philosophy, of science, of industry, of war, and of
peace ; the sweat, the laughter, the tears of existence,
to weave them into the great garment of Love.

This again is the true, the Higher Love :

A thousand years have passed,
And yet a thousand thousand ; years they are
As men count years, and yet we stand and gaze
With touching hands and lips immutable
As mortals stand a moment ; . . .
The universe is One ; One Soul, One Spirit,
One Flame, One infinite God, One infinite Love.'

Truly the poet has here refined the dross and poured
out before us the glittering metal. Yet what a differ-
ence he makes between the two great world forces :
the love of man for a good woman, and the love of
man for a bad woman ; the first is supreme, yet the
other is far from being infernal. Listen :

Yes. A good woman's love will forge a chain

To break the spirit of the bravest Greek ;
While with an harlot one may leap again
Free as the waters of the western main,
And turn with no heart-pang the vessel's beak
Out to the oceans that all seamen seek.'^

Another, this time a weird, charming little picture
of a lewd little mistress with " a generous baby soul,"

' Mysteries: Lyrical and Dramatic, vol. i, p. 1 20. The woman
is technically a harlot.
^ Ibid. vol. i, p. 121.

THE VIRGIN 77

we include here ; for such a one at any rate is not a
true prostitute, rather a poor deluded girl, yearning
to love and be loved, romantic and foolish, yet kind-
hearted and charitable to a fault : often the plaything
of man, and oftener the means of livelihood of some
bad woman. As Jenny wrapped in " the homage of
the dim boudoir," was Nina ; one of that large flotsam
of fragile girlhood which forms the better drift of vice,
the first to be swallowed in the social Maelstrom.

Yes : Nina was a thing of noug-ht,
A little laughing lewd gamine.
Idle and vicious, void of thought.
Easy, impertinent, unclean —
Utterly charming ! Yes, my queen !
She had a generous baby soul,
Prattled of love. Should I control.
Repress, perhaps, the best instinct
The child had ever had? I winked
At foolish neighbours, did not shirk.
Such caf^ Turc I made her drink
^ As she had never had before ;

Set her where you are sitting ; chatted ;
Found where the fires of laughter lurk ;
Played with her hair, tangled and matted ;
Fell over strict nice conduct's brink.
Gave all she would, and something more.
She was an honest little thing,
Gave of her best, asked no response.
What more could Heaven's immortal King
Censed with innumerous orisons? '

What more indeed ! Nina is charming, and we wish
we could say the same of many a Society dame who
holds her breath each time she passes such a one.

We have by now certainly slightly diverged from

* The Star and the Garter, vol. iii, p. lo. Nina is not a prosti-
tute, of course, in the commercial sense.

78 THE STAR IN THE WEST

True Love, let us now enter those enchanting realms
of Free Love, which is True Love in its truest form.
Nina is our guide, pointing us out the hill-top road
which will lead us above the social plain, and awed
by the mystic love of woman.

Racing- and maddening from the crown of flame,

The monolithic core of mystical

Red fury that is called a woman's heart.'

Enter the sphere of Free Love, and sit by the side of

AHce, look into the depth of her eyes, the depths of

her heart.

As a seeker sees the gold
In the shadow of the stream ;

see there her love.

As a diver sees the pearl
In the shadow of the sea ;

and murmur not above our breath

Ah ! you can love, true girl,
And is your love for me?^

"Alice, an Adultery." As golden a book of poetry
as Mademoiselle de Maupin is of prose.

The first poem in the book is called " Messaline." '
It is in a way a foreword to the ensuing sonnet-se-
quence, and yet in a way it is not, its spirit being
more essentially of Lust; for whatever the "unco
gude " may say, that of Alice and her lover is not.
To adulterate is to debase ; but there is no debase-
ment here. Love burns pure as a flame, and if it is,
as it is here, between a married woman and a lover

' Tannhauser, vol. i, p. 232.
' The Three Shadows, Rossetti.

' In the second edition, the first edition began with White
Poppy.

THE VIRGIN 79

who is not her legal husband, so much deeper the
lesson, so much vaster the love; defying all for its
own sake : and here, as we shall see in the end, sacri-
fices itself, so as not to tarnish the names of innocent
children, which the old harridan Society would other-
wise have besmirched with her foul saliva. In " Mes-
saline " we however have, as the poet says ' ' leprous
entanglements of sense " ; here is a magnificent pas-
sage heated with passion and not a little lust :

Breast to great breast and thigh to thigh,

We look, and strain, and laugh, and die.

I see the head hovering above

To swoop for cruelty or love ;

I feel the swollen veins below

The knotted throat, the ebb and flow

Of blood, not milk, in breasts of fire ;

Of deaths, not fluctuants, of desire ;

Of molten lava that abides

Deep in the vast volcanic sides ;

Deep scars where kisses once bit in

Below young mountains that be twin,

Stigmata cruciform of sin,

The diary of Messaline.'

A little further on — before the sonnets commence —
another poem greets our gaze and charms our senses,
it is called " Margaret":

The moon spans Heaven's architrave ;

Stars in the deep are set ;
Written in gold on the day's grave,

' ' To love, and to forget ; "
And sea-winds whisper o'er the wave

The name of Margaret.^

In these two short poems we have the spirit of Alice
offered us, passionate and sublime; a harmonious

' Alice, an Adultery, vol. ii, p. 63. * Ibid.

8o THE STAR IN THE WEST

blending of Messaline and Margaret in the form of
one sweet woman.

In none of the sonnets can it be said that there is a
single scene of lechery. True we shall have our
Buchanans and their ilk, and we still have Rossetti's
poems with one of his finest sonnets excised to please
Mrs. Grundy ; but matters it what the sewer-rat thinks
of the linnet's songs ? leave him in his dank drain, for
we need him not, neither his opinions.

There is a great lesson embodied in this poem. The
lesson that Love is only worthy its hallowed name,
when free ; that it is only worth having when freely
given, and worth keeping when freely held, without
bond or writ. This freedom we find in the very first
sonnet :

Against the fiat of that God discrowned,
Unseated by Man's Justice, and replaced
By Law most bountiful and maiden-faced

And Mother-minded : passing the low bound

Of Man's poor law we leapt at last and found
Passion ; and passing the dim halls disgraced
Found higher love and larger and more chaste,

A calm sphinx waiting in secluded ground. '

The first day of meeting he gazes on her, and
wonders whether Fate had found at last a woman's
love for him ; hopelessly he turns away and sinks the
dream of his soul in despair and " Kindled a corpse-
light and proclaimed ' The day ' ! "

Thither I fled, busied myself with these ;

When — lo ! I saw her shadow following !

In every cosmic season-tide of spring
She rose, being the spring : in utter peace

She was with me and in me : thus I saw

Ours was not love, but destiny, and law. ^

-' Alice, an Adultery, vol. ii, p. 64. ^ Ibid. vol. ii, p. 65.

THE VIRGIN 8i

Such is True Love, whether it be the love of a
virgin, a harlot, or a wife. No man-made law, no
convention, no ceremony can create it; for it is
spontaneous, anarchic ; few are its children, and still
fewer its warriors. All that this lover sees breathes
"Alice" ; all that he hears reverberates with her name ;
all that he smells holds the clinging scent of her hair,
Alice, Alice, Alice ! He feels she is beyond him ; yet
in his ear whispers the Master; whose power is
rapture.

I drew a hideous talisman of lust

In many colours where strong sigils shone ;

Crook'd mystic language of oblivion,
Fitted to crack and scorch the terrene crust
And bring the sulphur steaming from the thrust

Of Satan's winepress, was ill written on

The accursed margin, and the orison
Scrawled backwards, as a bad magician must.

By these vile tricks, abominable spells,
I drew foul horrors from a many hells —
Though I had fathomed Fate ; though I had seen

Chastity charm-proof arm and sea gray eyes
And sweet clean body of my spirit's queen,
Where nothing dwells that God did not devise.'

The sonnets relating the events of the seventh to
the tenth day are dismal, attempting to drown Love
in Lust. On the twelfth a little flame burns up, then
comes the poem, which Alice receives and reads.
Every verse is as charming, simple, and fascinating
as the following two :

One kiss, like snow, to slip.
Cool fragrance from thy lip

To melt on mine ;
One kiss, a white-sail ship
To laugh and leap and dip

Alice, an Adultery, vol. ii, p. 66.
G

82 THE STAR IN THE WEST

Her brows divine;
One kiss, a starbeam faint
With love of a sweet saint,
Stolen like a sacrament

In the night's shrine !

One kiss, like moonlight cold
Lighting with floral gold

The lake's low tune ;
One kiss, one flower to fold,
On its own calyx rolled

At night, in June !
One kiss, like dewfall, drawn
A veil o'er leaf and lawn —
Mix night, and noon, and dawn,

Dew, flower, and moon ! '

That Alice was charmed, that the above was a love-
philtre, the thirteenth day discloses— the birthday of
their first kiss :

Breasts met and arms enclosed, and all the spring
Grew into summer with the first long kiss.'

They are henceforth lovers, passionate and ardent ;
and not till now do they discover that man-made
honour is but as winter snow. All is hence Alice, as
is shown in that sweet and simple song which bears
her name :

The stars are hidden in dark and mist.

The moon and sun are dead,
Because my love has caught and kissed

My body in her bed.
No light may shine this happy night —
Unless my Alice be the light.

This night shall never be withdrawn —
Unless my Alice be the dawn.'

' Alice, an Adultery, vol. ii, p. 69.

' Ihid. vol. ii, p. 70. ' Ibid. vol. ii, p. 71.

THE VIRGIN 83

Yet Alice is full of fear ; they question their love,
and Love conquers. The still horror creeps silently
on, enveloping them in the shroud that man has woven
as the garment of love :

Since our pure shame unworthily destroys
The love of all she had, her girls and boys,

Her home, their lives : and yet my whisper stirs

Into live flame her passion, and deters
Her fear from spurning all the day's due joys.'

T\\Q piidibonderie of the English would call this lust.
Indeed, drunken on their own crapulous imagination,
choked by their venomous vomit, they cannot see the
divine form of Love through the mist of their steam-
ing sensuality. For what reason did man tie woman
to him? For what reason did he devise the horrors of
indissoluble marriage ? And the answer is : that he
might ever have at least one poor victim to sate his
vile carnalities on. Lust and Indolence are the parents
of Marriage and Law, but not even the menials of
Freedom and Free Love.

We clung still closer, till the soul ran through
Body to body, twined like sunny snakes,
Sinlessly knowing we were man and wife.^

Alice, still fearful, foresees the end; such love as
theirs is too supernal to be platonic ; she flies in vain ;
for she has to console her sad lover with the truth.
The storm-clouds gather on the twenty-fifth day :

Mouth unto mouth ! O fairest ! mutely lying.
Fire lambent laid on water, — O ! the pain !
Kiss me, O heart, as if we both were dying !

Alice, an Adultery, vol. ii, p. 73. ^ Ibid.

84 THE STAR IN THE WEST

Kiss, as we could not ever kiss again !
Kiss me, between the music of our sighing,
Lightning and rain ! '

A curious conflict this 'twixt love and fear, ' ' honour
and lust, and truth and trust beguiled;" they wan-
dered in the scented garden of man's heart, and all
their restraint was as ephemeral as the fleeting hour.
' ' And when the woman saw that the tree was good
for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a
tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the
fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her
husband with her ; and he did eat." (N.B. — Husband:
neither church nor registry office is mentioned!)

Linked in the tiny shelf upon the ship,

My blind eyes burned into her mild ones : limbs
Twined to each other while fine dew bedims

Their quivering skins : lip fastened unto lip :

Whole soul and body frenzied meet and clip ;

And the breath staggers, and the life-blood swims !
Terrible gods chant black demoniac hymns

As the frail cords of honour strain and slip.

For in the midst of that tremendous tide

The mighty vigour of a god was mine !

Drunk with desire, her lamentations died.
The dove gave place a moment to the swine ! '

Rapturous draughts of madness ! Out she sighed

Uttermost life's love, and became a bride.^

Not like Adam and Eve, however, did they then
discover that they were naked, such epilogues being
more especially suited to the author of " Lot and his
Daughters" and "The Concubine of Gibeah," than

* Alice, an Adultery, vol. ii, p. 76.

= Ibid. vol. ii, p. 77. " Many sins are forgiven this woman
because she hath loved much."

THE VIRGIN 85

the author of "Tannhauser" or "Alice." Neverthe-
less reproach followed, if shame did not, the celebra-
tion of love's mystic eucharist. Reproach rises, but
falls enamoured to his kisses ; all is extremes, there
is no heaviness, no deadness of sentiment, the smoke
curls as high as the flashing flames, and tears wash
out smiles, and blushing cheeks dry tears ; all is effluent
glory, glorious as a Sun of gold lingering on the
blushing bosom of Dawn :

We lay in naked chastity, caressed

Child-like or dreaming', till the dawn repressed

Our sighs : that nuptial yet hath never ceased. ^

Still the future rises up before them, as a serpent,
' ' prescience of next year ; " the Minotaur, ' ' prodigious
offspring of the fatal graft?" But the present is a
sublime kiss, and the future as hollow as the emblem
of two parted lips, " while love was hovering and our
lips were fain?" Soon the parting draws nigh, he
attempts to detain her; but he knows he must in-
evitably fail, as he knew his first kiss must inevitably
lead to their great love and surrender. They spend
the last melancholy day together :

Strong kisses that had surfeited a score

Of earthly bridals in an hour we squandered.^

And at last :

THE FIFTIETH DAY

At noon she sailed for home, a weeping bride
Widowed before the honeymoon was done.
Always before the rising of the sun

I swore to come in spirit to her side

Alice, an Adultery, vol. ii, p. 79. ' Ibid. vol. ii, p. 84.

86 THE STAR IN THE WEST

And lie like love ; and she at eventide
Swore to seek me and gather one by one
The threads of labyrinthine love new spun,

Cretan for monstrous shadows serpent-eyed.

So the last kiss passed like a poison-pain,

Knowing we might not ever kiss again.

Mad tears fell fast: " Next year!" in cruel distress
We sobbed and stretched our arms out, and despaired,

And — parted. Out the brute-side of truth flared;

' ' Thank God I've finished with that foolishness ! " '

This last line is almost staggering-, but such a cruel
truth is soon given the lie: "I am a fool, tossing a
coin with Fate," says he; and again, "I love you,
and shall love you till I die." " I love you, and shall
love you all my life." " I love you and shall love you
after death." This is the Higher Love; and so ends
one of the greatest poems of true and pure love ever
written, musical as the breath of stormy Aeolus. Fas-
cinated we read its verses again and again, dazzled
with their mystic beauty, their harmony, and, above
all, their intense human love. As the Editor says,
those who fail to find religion in such poems must
indeed be idiots, idiots who would bowdlerize Shake-
speare, Shelley, and Browning. Neither was their love
a mere selfish gratification of the senses. Anxiously
they waited to see " whether the mother stood behind
the bride," falteringly he would not part with her till
she held the key of the hereafter"; and ultimately
they resigned all for the sake of others :

Even while I begged her, I well knew she must.

We could not, loving to see children laugh.
Let cowards twit them with their mother's lust.
Even our own purity confirmed the trust.

' Alice, an Adultery, vol. ii, p. 84.

THE VIRGIN 87

How long, O Lord, how long? Too long by half
Till men read, wondering, wedlock's epitaph,^

Aleister Crowley is but editor ^ of these magnificent
sonnets ; let us now see how the ideas in his own
poems correspond.

In the case of Nina, we have already seen that a
good heart can throb in a lewd little breast, and can
overcome all except a false society ; which overwhelms
it not by bravery, or craft, or even by cunning, but
by the dull and stunning power of a leaden club. In
the "Honourable Adulterers" we find a poem strik-
ingly reminiscent of "Alice," a boundless, and what
Ydgrunites would call "an illicit love," but more, a
well-aimed shaft against the horrors of the social
marriage tie, which is denominated as "The devilish
circle of the fiery ring," which, as their love grew,
" Became one moment like a little thing."

If I am right, the heart of this poem bleeds gener-
ous indignation against the marriage bond. We read :

It was no wonder when the second day
Showed me a city on the desert way.

Whose brazen gates were open, where within

I saw a statue for a sign of sin,
And saw the people come to it and pray.

Before its mouth set open for a gin.'

Before this statue he is brought; her bronze and
chilly loins are girded with the sacred gold of lust,
her lips are lecherous and large, inviting to kiss :

But somehow blood was black upon them ; blood
In stains and clots and splashes ; and the mud

' Alice, an Adultery, vol. ii, p. 82.

' The authorship, however, is acknowledged in vol. ii, which
was published after this chapter was written.
' Mysteries: Lyrical and Dramatic, vol. i, p. gg.

88 THE STAR IN THE WEST

Trampled around her by the souls that knelt,
Worshipping- where her false lewd body dwelt,
Was dark and hateful ; and a sleepy flood
Trickled therefrom as magic gums that melt.^

I am a man, nor fear to drain the bowl."

Now some old devil, dead no doubt and damned.
But living in her life, had wisely crammed

Her fierce bronze throat with such a foul device

As made her belly yearn for sacrifice.
She leered like love on me, and smiled, and shammed,

And did not pity for all her breast of spice.'

Man though he was, he is thrust into her Moloch
arms. When lo ! a miracle ! he is plucked by his own
fearlessness from the horrid maw, " Free, where the
blood of other men is wet," mingling in life till " ten
thousand little loves were brought to birth"; then
came the one woman who looked so deeply in his
eyes till hers grew, shielding the sua, as a purple
ring:

Then in the uttermost profound I saw
The veil of Love's unalterable law
Lifted, and in the shadow far behind
Dim and divine, within the shadow blind
My own love's face most amorously draw
Out of the deep toward my cloudy mind.

O suddenly I felt a kiss enclose

My whole live body, as a rich red rose

Folding its sweetness round the honey-bee !

I felt a perfect soul embracing me.
And in my spirit like a river flows

A passion like the passion of the sea.*

So ends the first part of this mystical and symbolic
poem. In the second part the Queen speaks, her love

^ Mysteries : Lyrical and Dramatic, vol. i, p. 99.
' Ibid. vol. i, p. 100. ^ Ibid. ■> Ibid.

THE VIRGIN 89

is similar to that of "Alice," if not sublimer: '* I was
so glad he loved enough to go'' — "my arms could
never have released his neck." The King dies and
soon the Queen also. Love is symbolized in this poem
in its higher form as above death. She seeks and finds
" There is no sin."

And I? I knew not anything, but know
We are still silent, and united so,
And all our being spells one vast To Be,
A passion like the passion of the sea.^

Besides the freedom of lovers, Aleister Crowley
advocates the freedom of the children of love; he
does not visit the sins of the fathers on the children,
as conventionality cruelly does. Though he is a firm
believer in the chain of cause and effect as is strongly
shown in " The Mother's Tragedy," he does not carry
it further into the realms of Biblical vice. The children
of what is known as an illicit love — which in most
cases is true free love — have time after time proved
themselves better and greater than those engendered
in the unimpassioned embrace of the marriage-bed.
Shakespeare brings this point out forcibly in King
Lear, when Edmund speaks as follows :

. . . why brand they us
With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?
Who in the lusty stealth of nature take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed.
Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops,
Got 'tween asleep and wake?

In "Jephthah" we find an almost identical rendering
of the above, concerning the children of free love :

' Mysteries: Lyrical and Dramatic, vol. i, p. loi.

go THE STAR IN THE WEST

Turn not thy face from us in wrath, for we
Are thine own father's children, and his loins
With double fervour gat a double flower ;
And we indeed were born of drudging wives.
Pale spouses whom his heart despised, but thou
Wast of a fairer face and brighter eyes.
And limbs more amorous assuaged thy sire ;
And fuller blood of his is tingling thus
Now in thy veins indignant at our sin. ^

Thus we find free love is the great, pure, and only
true love. Its name has been soiled and fouled by the
feculencies of Holywell Street, its celebration mis-
understood and prostituted by the Church, and its
life threatened and blackguardized by the Law. But
wherever two hearts beat in unison, there is its abode.
North or South, East or West, it knows no locality,
no time, no space; for it is love sublime, eternal,
inscrutable; its greatest foe is Lust, and the most
fearful form of lust is Marriage: Whom God hath
joined let no man put asunder.

We have already seen marriage described in " The
Honourable Adulterers" and in "The Star and the
Garter"; we get a pregnant glimpse of it again in
the one speech, "A bargain's a bargain, a thousand
a year and a flat in Mayfair are better than Farmer
Tyson's butter and eggs. " ^ In these few words are
practically summed up the raison d'Hre of all mariages
de convenance. The affluent marry out of sensuality,
or to engender sons to inherit their selfishness, the
middle orders trot their daughters round the London
ball-rooms just as strumpets fall in to the cry of
descendes, mesdemoiselles ! Women marry for title,
clothing, shelter, and food; men because they think

' Jephthah, vol. i, pp. 70, 71.

' Why Jesus Wept, vol. iii, p. 42.

THE VIRGIN 91

it is cheaper to keep a cow, and once and for all have
done with it, than to be constantly running round the
corner for a penny-worth of milk; and the lower
stratum — the blessed poor — spend most of their lives
in the act of engendering the elite of heaven and
the scum of this earth, "mere shells, husks of the
golden wheat that might grow even here," ^ if it were
not for our prudery, our religion, and our laws.

Percy — the Percy of "The Poem," and not of
" Why Jesus Wept," is optimistic enough concerning
that vast army of unsexed women who are degraded
by want of food and surfeit of marriage ; for it is to
these two that their existence as such is chiefly due.
If wives were a success, man would not want to go
neighing after other women ; if food were not so ex-
pensive, women would not sell their bodies for offal.
Vaughan says to him, pointing to a prostitute, " Do
you find beauty in her?" to which Percy answers:
"No, but I see in her history a poem, to which I
trust that God will write an end ! " ^ And so the God,
who is eternal Love, at present does — in the Lock
Hospital or over Waterloo Bridge. Nevertheless there
is a great truth hidden in this line. The truth that
love shall triumph over mind, or rather that both shall
agree. If the carnal act is foul, it is then as foul in
the palace as in the brothel : mere prostitution of the
body need not necessarily mean a similar prostitution
of the mind, as we saw in the "Tale of Archais."
Every woman's body is as free a possession of her
own as that of every man is of his own, and what is
disgraceful to woman is equally disgraceful to man,
and vice versd. L^w to be true must be just, and as

^ The Poem, vol. i, p. 57. " Ibid. vol. i, p. 58-

92 THE STAR IN THE WEST

long as man wages war against woman for sins that
he condones in himself, so long will vice reign supreme,
so long will women prove themselves deceivers,
harpyise and sirenes, let alone Eumenides. Most will
recognize the following as the opening scene in
Terence's "The Mother-in- Law," which play sums
up the matter tersely enough :

Philotis. Y faith, Syra, you can find but very few lovers
who prove constant to their mistresses. For instance, how
often did this Pamphilus swear to Bacchis — how solemnly,
so that anyone might have believed him — that he never
would take home a wife so long- as she lived. Well now, he
is married.

Syra. Therefore for that very reason, I earnestly both
advise and entreat you to take pity upon no one, but plun-
der, fleece, and rend every man you lay hold of.

Philotis. What ! Hold no one exempt?

Syra. No one ; for not a single one of them, rest assured,
comes to you without making up his mind, by means of his
flatteries, to gratify his passion with you at the least poss-
ible expense. Will you not, pray, plot against them in
return?

Philotis. And yet, upon my faith, it is unfair to be the
same to all.

Syra. What! unfair to take revenge on your enemies?
or for them to be caught in the very way they try to catch
you? Alas! wretched me! why do not your age and beauty
belong to me, or else these sentiments of mine to you?"

So long as we mentally castrate ourselves, so long
will this world remain a stew-pot of vice ; for it is only
when we have realized the ideal of Free Love, and
have taken the matrix of prostitution and cut from it
the gem which underlies all its gross vulgarity and
sensuality, that we shall become initiates in the code
of the Essential and ameliorate our lot. To this poem
indeed we trust, that God will write a fitting end.

If at one end of a sequence we find abuse, then at

THE VIRGIN 93

the other extremity we shall inevitably discover dis-
use ; polarity is universal ; hot, cold ; good, bad, etc.
This duality is in reality only apparent, there being no
definite line of division. So in Love, if one system of
Ethics tends towards abuse, then we may be certain
that the reverse will be uselessly sterile, and that the
only possible system to follow will as usual lie directly
between these extremes, and in this case, in the region
of Use. If now, supposing at one end of our pole we
find Lust seated crimson as a rose, then at the other
we shall find Chastity white as a lily.

This system of extremes has during the world's
history exerted an overwhelming force on the will of
man. Beholding a satyr he worshipped a virgin ; feel-
ing the ills of the flesh, he conceived the bliss of the
soul. This diametric opposition, verging ever towards
the extreme circumference of utility, has given and is
giving birth to numerous world-wide systems and
philosophies.

The taboos of the South Seas, the restrictions laid
on widow-remarriage in India, the purdah of the
Mussulman, the veil of the Vestal, the numerous
accounts of Virgin-mothers, all find their origin in this
idea. The laws of the Vedas, of Manu, of Buddha,
the codes of Confucius and Lao-Tze, the Talmudic
books of the Jews, and the Koran of the Mohamedans,
all maintain its direct influence and restrictions ; and
in the West in the old mythologies of Teuton and
Celt, in the old Norse sagas, more so in the Roman
and Grecian law, and still more so on the Christian
edicts of Constantine, Theodoric, Athalaric, and Jus-
tinian, and the innumerable codes of the Middle Ages :
all of which growing one into the other have produced
that truly revolting state of affairs belting the world

94 THE STAR IN THE WEST

with Lust. As every one of us has been bred on dead
flesh, so every one of us passes along our way spiritu-
ally encumbered with the dead bones of our ancestors'
opinions ; and living with them we die, only to add
more mental tibias and spiritual metatarsals to the
groaning back of the future.

In the Kingdom of Love these extremes gave birth
to two forces, "Neronic Lust" and " Platonic Affec-
tion." From a heterogeneous mass of ics, ists, and
ians, sprang the idea that there was an inherent evil
in the culmination of the nuptial state ; and out of it
grew the preying vampirism of Paul. This inherent evil
supposed to lie latent in matter, as opposed to the
bliss of spirit, Crowley sets forth very forcibly in
several of his poems. In "The Growth of God" we
have most of the argument in the following lines :

The Shapeless, racked with agony, that grew

Into these phantom forms that change and shatter ;

The falling of the first toad-spotted dew ;
The first lewd heaving ecstasy of matter." '

The idea grows still more powerfully in the next verse :

I see all Nature claw and tear and bite.

All hateful love and hideous : and the brood
Misshapen, misbegotten out of spite ;

Lust after death ; love in decrepitude.
Thus, till the monster-birth of serpent-man

Linked in corruption with the serpent-woman,
Slavering in lust and pain — creation's ban.

The horrible beginning of the human. ^

In Tannhauser, which is an intensely psychologic
drama, we find the Knight speaking thus to Venus :

The Temple of the Holy Ghost, vol. i, p. 178.
Ibid. vol. i, p. 198. (Also Tale of Archais.)

THE VIRGIN 95

Ah, if pure love could grow material !
There are pure women !

and this is her answer:

There you make me laugh!
Remember — I have known such. But besides
You ask hot snow and leaden feather-flights ! '

Which contains a great truth, namely, that platonic
love is no love at all. An affection it may be, but love
it cannot be if it dare not see its form mirrored in the
eyes of a loving woman. Its failure in the end is a
certainty ; certain ascetics may compel their wills to
conquer their natures, but men as a whole cannot.
Certain maniacs such as Origen may emasculate
themselves for the Kingdom of God, but the great
human masses will let the Kingdom of God go to the
Devil, if a pretty pair of lips is in question. Not for
long in any case can we change our natures, as the
anchorites of the Libyan deserts only too fearfully
proved ; boiling with carnalities they feared to see
their own mothers, and were even forbidden to keep in
their possession animals of the female sex — ^O Sty-
lites ! they are now in heaven !

How we clave together ! How we strained caresses !
How the swrooning limbs sank fainting on the sward !
For the fiery dart raged fiercer ; in excesses
Long restrained, it cried, " Behold I am the Lord! " ^

Such is the ultimate end of platonic love. That
it has many noble forms, that it sprang from the
true abhorrence of the vile, cannot be denied; that

' Tannhauser, vol. i, p. 237.

= The Temple of the Holy Ghost, vol. i, p. 173.

96 THE STAR IN THE WEST

its field of combat is an Aceldama, all this is true

enough :

. . . whose red banners beat
Their radiant fire
Into my shrivelled head, to wither Love's desire? '

but that it must die on the field of its choice is also
most certain.

In " The Nameless Quest " and " Tannhauser," we
find represented this striving after a more spiritual
and platonic ideal of love. In the former, questing for
the ideal of his hopes, man falls tangled into the arms
of the real ; in the latter, entangled, he strives to tear
away the meshes of his passion, and at length suc-
ceeds in releasing himself from the magic threads.

In "The Nameless Quest," Gereth is in love with
the Queen, and the King calls on a knight to go on
the Nameless Quest to a certain pillar which lies at
the end of the road which leads from Human desire to
Divine contentment; around it lie the bones of the
"questing slain" unburied, unremembered, uncon-
fessed ; Gereth's name is cried aloud, and the King
bids him God-speed, girding on him his own true
sword, whilst the Queen draws from her finger a ring
and places it on his. Then when he has left their
presence he notices for the first time :

There was no jewel in the ring- she gave !
for it was the emblem of her total surrender :

Oh my pure heart ! Adulterous love began

So subtly to identify the man

With its own perfumed thoughts. So steals the grape

Into the furtive brain — a spirit shape

Kisses my spirit as no woman can.

I love her — yes; and I have no escape.^

' Aceldama, vol. i, p. 2.

'^ The Temple of the Holy Ghost, vol. i, p. i88.

THE VIRGIN 97

On the Quest he goes, ever tormented by the cry of
the inner self, ever striving to overcome it.

Again the cursed cry: " What quest is this?

Is it worth heaven in thy lover's kiss ?

A queen, a queen, to kiss and never tire !

Thy queen, quick-breathing for your twin desire ! "

I shudder, for the mystery of bliss ;

I go, heart crying and a soul on fire! '

Still, I stepped onward. Credit me so far!
The harlot had my soul : my will, the star !
ThHs I went onward, as a man goes blind.
Into a torrent crowd of mine own kind ;
Jostlers and hurried folk, and mad they are,
A million actions and a single mind.^

As he proceeds along his weary path, he feels a
strengthening within him of the higher self, struggling
against his desire, again and again every nerve in him
cries, "halt": at last he reaches the land of lost
ideals :

The plain is covered with a many dead.
Glisten white bone and salt-encrusted head.
Glazed eye imagined, of a crystal built.
And see ! dark patches, as of murder spilt.
Ugh ! " So my fellows of the quest are sped !
Thou shalt be with them : onward^ if thou wilt ! " '

He sees in the distance the pillar:

Quaintly shaped and hued.
It focussed all the sky and all the plain
To its own ugliness . . .*

and yet as he looked again he saw it in another form:

A shapeless truth took image in my brain.

' The Temple of the Holy Ghost, vol. i, p. i88.
' Ibid. vol. i, p. 189.

' Ibid. vol. i, p. igo. ' Ibid. vol. i, p. 191.

H

98 THE STAR IN THE WEST

Then from the centre of Eternity came a voice,
' ' Tell thou the secret of the pillar. " " Eternal Beauty,
One and absolute ! " flashes from his tongue. Again
the voice asks, " Thou knowest me for Beauty ! Canst
thou bear the fuller vision ? "

Then on my withered gaze that Beauty grew—
Rosy quintessence of alchemic dew !
The Self-informing- Beauty ! In my heart
The many were united : and I knew.'

And yet :

I was wed
Unto the part and could not grasp the whole.

Thus, I was broken on the wheel of Truth,
li'led all the hope and purpose of my youth,
The high desire, the secret joy, the sin
That coiled its rainbow dragon scales within.
Hope's being, life's delight, time's eager tooth ;
All, all are gone ; the serpent sloughs his skin !

The quest is mine ! Here ends mortality
In contemplating the eternal Thee.
Here, She is willing. Stands the Absolute
Reaching its arms toward me. I am mute,
I draw toward. Oh, suddenly I see
The treason-pledge, the royal prostitute.''

Thus does he fail at the very threshold of his higher
self. He hears echoing " Gereth, I am thine!" And
falling back on his purpose, the illusions of spirit and
mind dissolve to the desolate cry of "Unready."
Haggard and worn, back to the court he wends his
weary way, back to the King, back to his self's de-
sire ; and there, taunted by the husband of the mis-
1 .

' The Temple of the Holy Ghost, vol. i, p. 191. ' Ibid.

THE VIRGIN 99

tress he had denied himself in vain, stung with insult
and vile word, he slays him :

Stark dead. The queen — I hate the name of her!
So grew the mustard-seed, one moment's lust.'

Wounded himself, he is nursed back to life by the
wife of his adversary.

Ah God ! she won that most reluctant breath
Out of corruption : love ! ah ! love is strong^ !
What waters quench it? King Shalomeh saith.^

Thus failed the Quest, as all quest against love
must inevitably fail. A man who truly loves a woman
loves her so intensely that all else is as naught ; she
grows before him gigantic through the mist of his
desire, swallowing him up in the affinity of her being.
The King's sword was of little use ; the pillar of the
Higher Self lay in the salt-encrusted plains, saline
with the tears and sobs of failure ; the ring emblem-
atic of surrender, without beginning or end, was em-
blematic also of the eternality of love, that circling
girdle of the world.

In "Tannhauser" we have a similar idea, though
reversed ; for Tannhauser enmeshed in the web of the
Venusberg, strives against the sensual to gain a
spiritual victory; whilst in "The Nameless Quest"
the knight, fearful of falling in the sensual slough,
seeks, and loses his straight way in the spiritual
desert. Thus, as in the latter case, the striving
against the desire of a pure love leads to an almost
certain failure, so in the former, when sunk deep in
the mud of an impure affection, even if released from
its circling arms, worldly mercy is as cold to him who

' The Temple of the Holy Ghost, vol. i, p. 192 ^ Ibid.

loo THE STAR IN THE WEST

has plunged through the Cytherean sea as a winter
in Gaul. Thus Ignorance has bound, fettered, and
manacled love to the dingy fornices of the lupanar.
Once sink, and instead of extending a helping hand,
your head is thrust for a second and third time beneath
the waters of affliction by the hands of lechers and
louts.

The drama entitled " Tannhauser " is (as the author
states in his preface) almost identical with "The
Pilgrim's Progress." It is an intricate mass of psycho-
logy and philosophy closely interwoven with a moral
— which we shall see more fully developed when
touching upon the philosophy of Aleister Crowley —
and it is this: that Happiness, Wisdom, Knowledge,
and at length Perfection, can no more be gained by
solely travelling along the direct and spotless road of
Virtue, than man can be evolved from the primal
protoplasmic jelly without countless generations of
weeping and tortured life. The path of Vice we must
tread before we can find the high road of Virtue, and
Vice we must wed before we can open the gates of a
more perfect understanding. The great Command-
ment is : " Live in the midst of Vice ; but heed that
Vice doth not live in thy midst." '

"God is the Complex and the Protoplast." And
so are we; entwined within us, as in the poem of
Tannhauser, lie the countless threads of inherited
tendencies. To suspend our soul on one alone leads
only to utter destruction ; to climb to heaven we must
grasp the whole tangled skein of our experiences and
mount from Malkuth to Kether through the gates of
Knowledge, Wisdom, and Understanding. That we

' Vide Hosea.

THE VIRGIN loi

shall be pestered on our way by swarms of human
blow-flies, that we shall tread on the scorpions of re-
ligion, the toads of society, and the blind-worms of
the law; that around us will whirl the vampires of
the past, the kites of the present, the succubi of the
future, is certain enough; as a shrieking mass of
hideous animosity they will conglobe around us,
deafening us with the expletives of earth, blinding us
with the fumes of hell, and rendering us insane with
the inanities of heaven :

This were my guerdon : to fade utterly
Into the rose-heart of that sanguine vase,

And lose my purpose in its silent sea,

And lose my life, and find my life, and pass
Up to the sea that is as molten glass. ^

Nirvana. The drowning of self in eternity. Yet if the
mind returned not from its abode, and ever rested
with God, all would run smoothly enough ; but such
a possibility is too transcendental to be actual. If it
were,

Then this dull house of gold and iron and clay
Is happy also — 'tis an easy way ! ^

But this cannot be. The dice are in God's lap, and in
him alone rests the Ultimate goal. In " Tannhauser "
we find the great dual power of redemption, the inter-
minglings of the powers of Virtue and Vice. In him,
as in the hero of "The Nameless Quest," they wage
an eternal contest, it not being till he has passed
through the Venusberg of mental and physical lust,
that he attains the graal of his hopes and aspirations :

O God, Thy blinding beauty, and the light
Shed from Thy shoulders, and the golden night

^ Tannhauser, vol. i, p. 227. '^ Ibid.

I02 THE STAR IN THE WEST

Of mingling fire, and stars and roses swart

In the long flame of hair that leaps athwart,

Live in each tingling gossamer ! Dread eyes !

Each flings its arrow of sharp sacrifice,

Eating me up with poison ! I am hurled

Far through the vaporous confines of the world

With agony of sundering sense, beholding

Thy mighty flower, blood-coloured death, unfolding !

Lithe limbs and supple shoulders and lips curled.

Curled out to draw me to their monstrous world ! '

Tannhauser now enters the palace of the great
queen Venus, the false Isis,

Life ! Life ! This Kiss ! Draw in thy breath ! To me !
Tome!"

He is lost!

Act n opens with two beautiful songs. Venus sings
the praise of spring and summer, and Tannhauser
that of autumn and winter. He finds the latter chill
season the best :

But best is grim December,

The Goatish God his power ;
The Satyr blows the ember.

And pain is passion's flower ;
When blood drips over kisses.

And madness sobs through wine : —

Ah mine ! —
The snake starts up and hisses

And strikes and— I am thine ! '

In the above we still find the now almost dead echo
of his higher self, yet Venus entices him on, compar-
ing their fierce lust to the lukewarm affection of those
little lovers who strip their maidens bare, "And find
them — naked ! Poor and pitiful ! " * directly the glamour

' Tannhauser, vol. i, p. 228. ^ Ihid, vol. i, p. 229.

^ Ibid. vol. i, p. 230. * Ibid. vol. i, p. 231.

THE VIRGIN 103

of their foolish honeymoon has tarnished. His un-
easiness is soon dispelled: "Come, in this sweet
abandonment of self" — whispers the singing voice of
Venus, and so following he sings :

Come, love, and kiss my shoulders ! Sleepy lies

The tinted bosom whence its fire flies,

The breathing life of thee, and swoons, and sighs,

And dies !

None but the dead can know the worth of love !

Come, love, thy lips, curved hollow as the moon's !
Bring me thy kisses, for the seawind tunes.
The song that soars, and reads the starry runes,
And swoons !
None but the dead can tune the lyre of love ! '

Such are two out of these six superb lyrical verses.

Tannhauser sleeps. " None but the dead can know
the worth of love ! " None but the dead, dead to all
else. To love is to die and be born again in another
world, to slough the skin of the terrene and be robed
in all the supernal glory of the celestial. Love changes
as Death, it effaces the past, it brightens the future,
beautifies as the hand of some mystic artist, all misery,
all sorrow, all woe, overwhelming, illimitable.

Now we see the horrid form of his lower self, which
he once strove to cast off, bending over him; the
Venus of his body rises lecherous over the pure Isis
of his soul, the carnal lusting over the Spiritual, as
lago slavered over Desdemona.

Come ! ye my serpents, warp his body round
With your entangling leprosy ! And me.
Let me assume the beloved limber shape.
The crested head, the jewelled eyes of death,

' Tannhauser, vol. i, p. 234.

I04 THE STAR IN THE WEST

And sinuous sinewy glitter of serpenthood,

That I may look once more into his face,

And, kissing, kill him ! Thus to hold him fast,

Drawing his human spirit into mine

For strength, for life, for poison ! Ah, my God !

These pangs, these torments ! See ! the sleeper wakes !

I am triumphant ! For he reaches out

The sleepy arms, and turns the drowsy head

To catch the dew dissolving of my lip.

Wake, lover, wake ! Thy Venus waits for thee !

Draw back, look, hunger ! — and thy mouth is mine ! " ^

The vision of Elizabeth, the loved one of his boy-
hood — his pure ideal — rises before him.

... so delicate and frail.
Far, white, and lonely as the coldest star
Set beyond gaze of any eye but God's.'

And he tells Venus of her. To which she answers :

Thine old desire
Was just to touch the mere impalpable.
To formulate the formless . . .'

Again Tannhauser bursts into song, one of those
magnificent lyrics, flashing like a ruby, warm and
flaming in the glowing gold of this drama. And thus
does his song end :

Whose long-drawn curse runs venom in ray veins?

What dragon spouse consumes me with her breath?
What passionate hatred, what infernal pains.
Mixed with thy being in the womb of Death ?
Blistering fire runs,
Scorching, terrific suns.
Through body and soul in this abominable
Marriage of demon power
Subtle and strong and sour,

' Tannhauser, vol. i, p. 234. ^ Ibid. vol. i, p. 236.

^ Ibid. vol. i, p. 237.

THE VIRGIN 105

A draught of ichor of the veins of Hell !

Curses leap leprous, epicene, unclean.

The soul of the obscene
Incarnate in the spirit: and above

Hang-s Sin, vast vampire, the corrupt, that swings

Her unredeeming wings
Over the world, and flaps, for lust of Death — and Love ! '

"Kill me," cries Tannhauser. "In the kiss,"
answers Venus: thus ends Act II.

Act III opens a different scene. The outer materi-
ality of body is all but sated, the starved soul within
cries for sustenance; he murmurs "Elizabeth," and
then wakes strong through her perfection. Venus
still entices, but her power has vanished, and at the
name of " Ave Maria! " the exorcism entangled round
the souls of the victims of the Venusberg vanishes in
a vast roll of thunder and amidst the fierce flashes of
dazzling lightning which rush through the leaden sky
rending the depths of despair. Tannhauser is re-
leased from his bondage, and the shackles of lust
fall from his soul; he is free, and kneeling by a
Calvary.

Act IV again brings our knight before the gaze of
the world. He has eaten of the tree of the Knowledge
of Good and of Evil, and has become as a god. He
wends his way to the Court of the Landgrave and
there meets Elizabeth, "His far-oif baby-love," as
Venus called her, and whispers to himself, "Cannot
purity be brought to know aught but itself? "
Herein lies the note of his misfortunes. Purity was
but ignorance, and Tannhauser was now a god,
knowing both good and evil :

' Tannhauser, vol. i, p. 239.

io6 THE STAR IN THE WEST

Lo!
Man is made one with God, an equal soul.
For he shall know

The harmony, the oneness of the Whole.
This was my purpose.

Rema,ins the life of earth, which is but hell,
Destiny's web, and my immense despair,^

And this despair — as sorrow so frequently does —
creates in him a deep cynical disgust for the world :

Man, a bad joke; and God, mere epigram!
If we must come to that. And likewise love. ^

Only a donkey fastened to a post
Moves in a circle.*

He taunts them, insults God; and tells all, shouting
it far and broad, that his road was the road of the
Mount of Venus, the road of Lust, the fiery baptism
of Vice which impels Virtue. Then the silence breaks,
the foul mob of the Self-sufficient, the spawn of ignor-
ance, and the slime of superstition, let loose their
hell-hound voices : — fiend ! atheist ! devil ! are hurled
at his head; kill him! Crucify him! death! death!
But Tannhauser stands a colossus amid the bursting
bubbles of this Stygian mire of corruption, and turn-
ing to the Landgrave he says :

Will they answer you ?
My arm is weary as your souls are not
Of beastliness : I have drawn my father's sword.
Hard as your virtue is the easy sort,
Heavy to handle as your loves are light,
Smooth as your lies, and sharper than your hates !
I know you ! Cowards to the very bone ! '

' Tannhauser, vol. i, p. 253. '' Ibid. ' Ibid. vol. i, p. 254.
" Ibid. vol. i, p. 257.

THE VIRGIN 107

And he drives them out. To Rome he goes, symbolic
of the world's opinion, and relates truthfully his
sojourn in the Venusberg-, and for telling the truth
he is execrated by the Pope :

So he
Cried out upon me, " Till this barren staff
Take life, and bud, and blossom, and bear fruit.
And shed sweet scent — so long; God casteth thee
Out from His Glory!'"

When lo! — in the very moment of his supreme
despair, his Genius mysteriously manifests, and
"darting' long rugged fingers and deep eyes"
reaches to the sceptre with his word and will :

Buds, roses, blossoms ! Lilies of the Light !

Bloom, bloom, the fragrance shed upon the air !

Out flames the miracle of life and love !

Out, out the lights ! Flame, flame, the rushing storm !

Darkness and death, and glory in my soul !

Swept, swept away are pope and cardinal,

Palace and city! There I lay beneath

The golden roof of the eternal stars,

Borne upon some irremeable sea

That glowed with most internal brilliance ; ''

And verily
My life was borne on the dark stream of death
Down whirling aeons, linked abysses, columns
Built of essential time. And lo ! the light
Shed from Her shoulders whom I dimly saw ;
Crowned with twelve stars and horned as the moon ;
Clothed with a sun to which the sun of earth
Were tinsel ; and the moon was at Her feet —
A moon whose brilliance breaks the sword of song
Into a million fragments ; so transcends
Music, that starlight-sandalled majesty !
Then — shall I contemplate the face of Her ?

^ Tannhauser, vol. i, p. 260. ^ Ibid. vol. i, p. 261.

io8 THE STAR IN THE WEST

O Nature ! Self-begotten ! Spouse of God,
The Glory of thy Countenance unveiled !
Thy face, O mother ! Splendour of the Gods !
Behold ! amid the glory of her hair
And light shed over from the crown thereof.
Wonderful eyes less passionate than Peace
That wept ! That wept ! O mystery of Love !
Clasping my hands upon the scarlet rose
That flamed upon my bosom, the keen thorns
Pierced me and slew ! My spirit was withdrawn
Into Her godhead, and my soul made One
With the Great Sorrow of the Universe,
The Love of Isis ! Then I fell away
Into some old mysterious abyss
Rolling between the heights of starry space ;
Flaming above, beyond the Tomb of Time,
Blending the darkness into the profound
Chasms of matter — so I fell away
Through many strange eternities of Space,
Limitless fields of Time . . .'

Such is the ecstatic rapture of Tannhauser, in
which he loses all perception of earthly love in the
intoxication of the divine :

Were it not only that the selflessness
That fills me now, forbids the personal.
Casts out the Individual, and weeps on
For the united sorrow of all things.^

And such is the divine love to which we all must
attain, " For the united sorrow of all things."

' Tannhauser, vol. i, p. 261. ^ Ibid.

Ill

The Chapter known as

Ube Ibarlot

In which chapter it is related how she decked and be-

tired her worn carrion, and how she standeth at the

corners by the parting of the ways, beguiling those

who are simple in mind and virtuous, and how

she feasteth on their innocence and con-

verteth all she eateth into dung.

Zhe Ibarlot

IN that masterpiece " Tannhauser," without any re-
questwhatsoever, and without any idiotic introduc-
tion, thesongofan unknown minstrel breaks unheralded
on the astonished ears of the Landgrave's Court :

Tender the phrase, and faint the melody,
When poets praise a maiden's purity ;
Platitude linked to imbecility.^

Murmurs of surprise arise, but it is not till he sings,

As 'mong-st springf's sprigs sprouts sunshine's constant face ;

Or as a mill grinds on, with steady pace ;

So sprouts, so grinds, the unblushing commonplace.^

that the murmurs break into an indignant uproar.
Insolent scoundrel, rude upstart, abusing our ears
with your insults ! Crucify him! boycott him! cut him!

The Landgrave's society was shocked by that rude
minstrel, and our society is no doubt shocked by the
satire of Aleister Crowley. On our book-shelves his
works stand literary pickled birches, to administer to
our mental ultimatums a corrective dose. A good
purgative is an excellent thing taken now and again,
it keeps both the bowels free and the mind clear, and
Mrs. Grundy is nothing if she be not constipated.

"Thou poisonous bitch," says Crowley, when he
addresses a Spenserian verse to Mrs. Sally G d,

' Tannhauser, vol i, p. 249. ' Ibid.

113 THE STAR IN THE WEST

"The gawk and dowdy with the long grey teeth,"
who jumps to conclusion, instant, out of hand, that :
"There is some nasty secret underneath.'" If Mrs.

G d, or Mrs. Grundy, should happen to peruse

this verse in "Why Jesus Wept," she might not
be overpleased. If she perused it at all, the violent
Cascarian properties of this social drama would
probably prove as efficacious as a No. 9 would to
the hide-bound bowels of Mr. Atkins. Due invitation
is also made, and the following should even entice her
prudish cerebellum:

But stow your prudery, wives and mothers,
You know as much muck as — those others !
Your modest homes are dull ; you need me !
Don't let your husbands know j but — read me ! ^

In this extraordinary volume, which seems to be
the child of a promise made to Mr. Chesterton in the
"Sword of Song," we find a deeply cynical satire
castigating with no little severity the menial servility
of modern society, as scathing as a Beverland, as
cynical as a Carlyle, and as satirical as a Butler.

Its great theme is the contest " of age and sense
with flatulence and youth." We have already shaken
hands with Percy, Molly, and Lady Baird (Angela) ;
we have still to be introduced to Lord Glenstrae.
The first two form the flatulent element, the latter
two the constipated substance of this drama. Angela,
the female quantity; Glenstrae the male: both are
outwardly highly moral; both are ready to lay their

^ Why Jesus Wept, vol. iii, p. 24.

^ Ibid. vol. iii, p. 22. Cf. Martial, Epigrams, XI. 16:

Erubuit, posuitque meum Lucretia librum,
Sed coram Bruto ; Brute, recede, leget.

THE HARLOT 113

morality aside with skirt and shirt when opportunity
should offer.

When Percy fell in love with Molly, we saw how
Lady Angela enticed him from her by her maturer
wisdom. Utterly false, the social hag of sixty totally
eclipses the girl of sixteen ; she backs her knowledge
against the latter's innocence, and wins in a canter.
So much for morality.

A woman is only as old as she feels; and grey hairs
do not count so long as they can be counted; such
was the innocence of our early Victorian grandmothers.
Nowadays a woman is as young in manner as she is
old in years ; and as for hair ask the coiffeurs. As
cats grow cantankerous in old age, so do women,
and Angela is a good example of one of the many
vicious, crafty, and crabbed old vixens who monopolize
society. When she hears Percy murmur words of
love to Molly, she hisses :

Ah ! if there were a devil to buy souls,
Or if I had not sold mine ! Quick bargain, God !
Hell catch the jade ! Blister her fat red cheeks !
Rot her snub nose ! Poison devour her guts !
Wither her fresh clean face with old grey scabs.
And venomous ulcers gnaw the baby breasts ! '

Most charitable ! But such is the Kingdom of Society.
"Angela " is a lovely name (so thinks inexperienced
Percy), and correspondingly the owner must have a
lovely nature; and when he has discovered what an
abyss yawns between "girl" and "village girl" he
throws himself into the arms of the lovely Angela and
listens to her murmuring sighs as she stumbles :

Ay, love, it is to feel your strength support me ! [Aside.
Will the doctors never catch up with the coiffeurs ? '

> Why Jesus Wept, vol. iii, p. 30. ^ Ibid. vol. iii, p. 35.

I

114 THE STAR IN THE WEST

Percy, the now distraught lover of Angela, turns to
his first moony love, and withdrawing his heart
proffers her his purse :

Buy yourself a pretty hat !
Forget my pretty speeches ! '

The above needs no comment. Most men will under-
stand it well enough ; for there are a hundred thousand
women in London who need no editor's appendix or
translator's footnote.

Enter Glenstrae.
(To conceive him asketh not
Imagination's waistcoat buttons undone!
Any old gentleman in any club in London.)^

Meeting Molly he asks her for a glass of milk, and
comforts her on hearing that she intends going into
service, saying : ' ' And so you shall, my dear, so you
shall. Come and live with my wife as her companion,
and we will try and find your lover for you. No doubt
the arts of this — er — designing female will soon lose
their power — there, there, no thanks, I beg! I never
could bear to see a pretty wench cry — there, there ! " *
We have now thoroughly grasped the quality of the
male element, and the two together, the harlot and
the lecher, produce the social code and seven-eighths
of the social woes.

"Must I, must I? Oh, sir, have pity!" sobs the
poor disillusionized Molly, as the male element who

' Why Jesus Wept, vol. iii, p. 38.— "My mind lay there as
exhausted as my body ! He covered my blushes by the offer of
a tiny remuneration." — Beverland, p. 405.

" If your heart were as big as your feet, you would have
given me five francs instead of five sous. " — Frou-Frou.

"^ Ibid. vol. iii, p. 38.

= Ibid. vol. iii, p. 39. Vide, The Martyrs of Hell's Highway.

THE HARLOT 115

has enjoyed her, now shoves her aside " with the
dishes and the wine," a thousand a year, and a flat in
Mayfair — quite a lucky girl !

Two years later a woman shouts out, "Won't you
come with me, ducky?" This is Molly; a morphia-
maniac also appears, — this is Percy. Glenstrae is now
the President of the Children's Special Service Mission
— suffer the little children, etc. And Angela the head of
a Zenana Mission. "Think of the poor heathen kept
in such terrible seclusion ! " The end is as farcical as
Society herself. Angela is suffocated in sulphuric
acid whilst washing off her enamel, and Glenstrae
sawn into thirty-eight pieces whilst playing with little
children, by stumbling against a circular saw.

' ' His Lordship was very fond of children, as you
may know. It seems he was pursuing — it is, I am
told, an innocent child's game! — one of the factory
hands; and — he stumbled." '

Molly is pronounced virgo intacta by twenty-three
eminent physicians,^ and marries Percy who is of
course quite reformed.'

Farewell, you filthy-minded people !

I know a stable from a steeple.

Farewell, my decent-minded friends !

I know arc lights from candle ends.

Farewell ! a poet begs your alms,

Will walk awhile among the palms.

An honest love, a loyal kiss,

Can show him better worlds than this ;

Nor will he come again to yours

While he knows champak-stars from sewers.'

' Why Jesus Wept, vol. iii, p. 48.
^ Twenty-three Sanhedrin judges.

^ The satire is against the belief that conversion can put
the clock back. ' Ibid. vol. iii, p. 50.

ii6 THE STAR IN THE WEST

Aleister Crowley's estimate of society is certainly
not a very high one, and more especially so when he
takes into consideration the pudibonderie of the
English. Society is but a gaping and toothed gin, as
he well shows in "The Honourable Adulterers " where
women, the frailer sex, are the unfortunate victims.
Man made God, and God made woman out of one of
man's wretched little ribs. Regardless of manners,
man sucks the wretched little bone as he would the
leg of a chicken, tears off the flesh and casts it into
the bin. The masses are but sheep, following the
bell-wether convention; deprive them of their initial,
and they become neither lambs nor tigers but merely
asses. Ahinoam in "Jephthah" well described them
when he addressed the assembled multitude as :

Ye are as children ... I never hear your voice but know
Some geese are gabbling. '

Or again, in "The Nameless Quest,"

God's heart ! the antics, as they toil and shove !
One grabs a coin, one life, another love.
All shriek.^

Cora Vavasour made a pretty just estimate of
society when she called its stulti " prurient licksores
of society," for that is exactly what they are; when
poor, squalid; when rich, vulgar; the men fond of
kitchen-maids, and the women painted and cosmetic-
ized, not only to hide the ravages of debauchery, but
to catch new lovers ; the boys a breed of cads, and
the girls a breed of prudes.

Jephthah, vol. i, p. 8i.

The Temple of the Holy Ghost, vol. i, p. 189.

THE HARLOT 117

The following is Crowley's estimate of the greatest
nation on earth :

O England ! England, mighty England falls !

Her days of wealth and majesty are done:
Men trample her for mire ! ^

and for her eldest daughter, America, he also has but
scant praise,

Thou heart of coin beneath a brazen breast !
Rotten republic, prostitute of gain ! ^

Wealth and luxury are her curse, as they are every-
where else :

The politician and the millionaire
Regain maternal dung.'

Nevertheless in a patriotic poem entitled "An Appeal
to the American Republic," he strongly urges union
between Great Britain and the United States.

That friendship and dominion shall be wrought

Out of the womb of thought.
And all the bygone days be held as things of nought.'

Are we not weary of the fang^d pen?

Are we not friends, and men?
Let us look frankly face to face — and quarrel then ! '

Strongly advocating fraternity between the two great
nations, he vehemently deprecates "The hireling
quillmen and the jingo crowd."

In a poem called "A Valentine" in "Mysteries:
Lyrical and Dramatic" — though a footnote winks,
"nothing more; be it well remembered!" — we find

' Carmen Saeculare, vol. i, p. 215.

^ Ibid. vol. i, p. 217. ' Ibid.

* An Appeal to the American Republic, vol. i, p. 137.
° Ibid. vol. i, p. 139.

ii8 THE STAR IN THE WEST

embedded in a slight verse of four lines the nucleus
of all true patriotism, greater than power, wealth, or
dominion, and that is motherhood :

Fiercer desires may cast away

All things most good ;
A people may forget to-day

Their motherhood.'

This is the condition of the England of to-day : " O
England! England, mighty England falls 1 " because
she no longer knows how to bear Englishmen.
Wealth cries for luxury, and luxury sniffs at the hem
of lust, and lust rises o'er us a vampire kite to drink
dry the blood of our veins.

The two great ideals of our country, as Geoffrey
Mortimer rightly says, are the commercial, and the
voluptuous.'' Every man striving against his brother,
struggling and elbowing his way through the seething
crowds of human life to satisfy his own personal lusts.

Gentility has become the lowest plane of mental
degradation, and so as the monde sinks in this social
earthquake does the demi-monde rise. Phryne trips
lightly to-day down Piccadilly, bringing with her no
little of the beauties of Praxiteles, and the craft of
Apelles. We see her no longer the draggle-tailed
prostitute of the more eminently Christian centuries,
but as a Venus Anadyomene rising from the sea of
human corruption. It was Phryne who uttered those
memorable words over the ruins of Thebes : "A lexander
diruit, sed meretrix Phryne refecit " ; and it is now
Alice and Rosie, who are uttering them over the ruins
of the temple of Vesta. Thais cajoled Alexander into

' Mysteries: Lyrical and Dramatic, vol. i, p. 121.
" Blight of Respectability, p. 1 10.

THE HARLOT 119

burning the royal palace of Persepolis, and after his
death married Ptolemy, King of Egypt; and was it
not at the feet of Lais that such men as Demosthenes
and Diogenes were to be found? Was it not also
Catullus who sang to the fickle Lesbia :

Give me kisses thousand fold,

Add to them a hundred more ;
Other thousands still be told,

Other hundreds o'er and o'er.

And Propertius to the wayward Cynthia :

Cynthia's unsnaring eyes my bondage tied :

Ah wretch ! no loves, till then, had touched my breast.

Love bent to earth these looks of steadfast pride,
And on my neck his foot triumphant press'd.

So it is to-day. Conventionalism is passing along
its way chaotic and disordered. Mutinus is worshipped
at every street corner, and the goat of Mendes slavers
over the revellers as they wend their way home with
their Gitons and Messalinas^

" The decay of a people, as well as a family, begins
with the preponderance of selfishness," ' so says Max
Nordau ; and similarly Paul Carus writes, " We know
of no decline of any nation on earth, unless it was
preceded by an intellectual and moral rottenness,
which took the shape of some negative creed or
scepticism, teaching the maxim that man lives for the
pleasure of living, and that the purpose of our life is
merely to enjoy ourselves."^ Even as early as the
middle of the seventeenth century, Adrian Beverland
in \i\s Justinianaei de stolatae Virginitatis \sic\ noticed
this social collapse: " dum puellas nostrates adeo

1 Conventional Lies. Max Nordau.
' Fundamental Problems, p. vii.

I20 THE STAR IN THE WEST

verecundiam suam perfricta fronte excutiant, ut a
lupis, tremula clune exten toque collo saltantibus, vix
discerni possint." ' When the rich approach the poor,
"altera manu fert panem, penem ostentat altera."
Such is another Pantagruelism of Beverland, crude
yet to the point. ' ' The girl who of her own accord
presents herself to student, soldier or artist, is con-
sidered, by Jove! to give a headlong consent to
debauchery." ^ So we see that whilst the upper classes
are prostituting themselves for social position, rank,
and riches, the lower are doing so for a few wretched
coins; and the difference? One eats bread, and the
other bread and butter. The " unco gude " thrive and
heap execrations on the "unco bad." In "Oracles,"
Crowley states this with the straightforwardness of
a Burns :

What fierce temptations might not lovers bring

In London's wicked city?
Perhaps you might yourself have one wee fling,

If you were pretty.

What might not hard starvation drive you to,

With Death so near and sure?
Perhaps it might drive even virtuous you,

If you were poor. '

And in ' ' Orpheus " he well describes the social trinity :
Nay ! virtue is the devil's name for vice.
And all your righteousness is filthy rags
Wherein ye strut, and hide the one base thought.
To mask the truth, to worship, to forget;
These three are one.*

The moral character of a nation is its true capital,
and the two great laws of existence are — "The

^ Beverland, 238. ^ Ibid. 414.

' Oracles, vol. ii, p. 5. * Orpheus, vol. iii, p. 208.

THE HARLOT 121

struggle for Life," and "The struggle for the Ideal,"
if then the ideal is low, the capital is also wanting,
and moral bankruptcy is at hand.
It has been said,

Donna ociosa non pu6 esser virtuossa.
(A woman of leisure cannot be virtuous.)

Which is very true, and neither can a nation. The
present ages are peopled with fiends and fools, living
outwardly in precadian innocence, but inwardly in all
the knowledge of the cities of the plains. The fiend
crawls in the slimy dark, and the fool pulls the white
sheets of credulity over his head, and like the gaby
ostrich chuckles: " I can't see them, they can't see
me " — he forgets his odour. Crowley has torn the
veil of mock-modesty from off" the face of Pseudo-
morality, leaving her as bare and hideous to the
gaze as the face of the prophet of Khorassan. He
has seized the social harlot and hurled her from her
throne ; has forced open her jaws, and administered
a sharp emetic, a mental purgative, a rouser ! Let us
hope it will clean her out, and do her good.

IV

The Chapter known as

Zbc /iBotber

In which chapter it is related how Our Lady was
brought to bed of a rose ; and how she planted it
in the garden of her heart, and how it grew and
flourished in divers fashions. And how some-
times it appears as white, and at others
as red, and yet still at others both
red and white together, so that
the most wise were sore
perplexed to tell which
was the colour
proper to it.

^be fIDotber

OUT of the countless thousands who tread the
slippery and perilous paths of the lower self
Tannhauser was one of the very few who emerged
from its clammy darkness purified, and sanctified, to
soar resplendent into the sunny realms of the higher
self; nor did he rest, but entranced in the immensity
of hope, rushing on, whirling through the abyss of
time and space, he ultimately lost self in the rapture
of Nirvana. Again, in others so subtle is the psycho-
logy of sense that this hysterical clinging to the
Chaste often reacts, hurling its unfortunate aspirant
into the arms of Lubentina. The lust after God and
the lust after man are near akin. A woman crossed
in love and debarred from enjoying the sweet em-
braces of her lover, will embrace in his stead the
sour feet of her God. Similarly, Magdalene, having
passionately sought love, and having lost the skein
of her desires in the labyrinthine byways of lust,
threw her weeping form at the feet of Him in whom
she found the ideal of her affection, washing those
dusty feet with her tears, and drying them with the
long tresses of her hair, still perfumed with the kisses
of a thousand lovers. Jesus Christ and John Smith
are very nearly related, and a woman who is capable
of loving one is also capable of loving the other.
Flaubert finely pictures this when he represents
Madame Bovary, kneeling at her prie-dieu and ad-
dressing to her Lord the same sweet words she had

126 THE STAR IN THE WEST

formerly murmured to her lover in the effusions of
adultery. So it often happens that the most spiritual
are at heart the most passionate. Passion and Re-
ligion are the divine Dioscuri, children of Nemesis.

Man, when God became too intangible, too mag-
nificent to approach, conceived a mediator. Jahveh,
surrounded by howling beasts and moulting angels,
fenced in by thunder and lightning, was quite cut off
from the simple minds of the Suburra, so Christ in
those purlieus was manufactured ; but He in His turn
grew exaltedly dim, magnified as the mist of ages
crept around Him, and when romantic love was born,
man being no longer able to worship man, enthroned
the spotless Virgin in his stead ; for in his heart still
lingered the sea-born form of Aphrodite, and on his
lips the warm kisses of the Cytherzean goddess,
Philommedis, Basilea, Isis, or Astarte, call her what
you will, of passionate Love. So Christ was enthroned
amongst the gods, and His tender mother, the ever
chaste Virgin, set on the humbler throne over the
destiny of men's hearts ; yet awake, the actual man
loses the ideals of his dreaming hours, straining to
his heart the form of her whom he loves best on
earth, deserting his heavenly bride for his earthly
spouse. Such is the duality of love — the mundane
and the celestial.

Which nations now are the most passionate, the
man-worshippers or the woman-worshippers? the
latter, and it is for this reason that I included Tann-
hauser in the first part of this essay, rather than in
the second, dealing with the philosophy of Aleister
Crowley. It is this spiritual exaltation, curious as it
may seem, which so often links the pure true love
to the foul false love. Love of man and woman is

THE MOTHER 127

normal, love of man and woman for God is abnormal,
and the abnormal in its turn breeds the lustful,
whether the abnormality lies in the twists of the mind
or the aberrations of the soul. Amnon lusted after
Tamar, he was a mental monster; Ezekiel devoured
dung, he was a spiritual abortion.

That a passionate nature is necessarily a lustful
one, is often no njore the case than that a lustful one
need necessarily be passionate ; that lust as well as
passion often inhabit the same mind is true enough,
and that its forms are monstrous must be apparent
to all students of sexual psychology ; as the cold-
blooded lust of the lecher, who can only find stimula-
tion for his gross lecheries in the horrors of a de Sade,
devouring in security and ease maidens and youths,
as the minotaur did of old — " semibovemque virum,
semivirumque bovem." This is the lust which is the
most horrid, and the most damnable ; it takes much
to produce a passionate man, but little to engender a
lustful one. The present generation possesses a mini-
mum of passion and a maximum of lust. There is no
lust of Rome, of Greece, or Arabia, no vice of Sodom,
of Paphos, or Lampsacus, that is not practised to-day
in any of our larger modern towns. Lust of wealth,
lust of ease, lust of renown, lie as cankering worms in
our hearts ; and the cold bought lust of our marriage-
beds and our streets fill our days with woe. Chivalry
is dead, and the gilded Ass reigns in the place of the
champing Stallion, and brays its goatish desires over
the naked form of the sterile Mule.

No longer in this ice-bound age of frozen phalli do
we hear sung :

For, swooning at the fervid lips
Of Artemis, the maiden kisses

128 THE STAR IN THE WEST

Sob, and the lang'uid body slips

Down to enamelled wildernesses.

Fallen and loose the shaken tresses ;
Fallen the sandal and girdling gold,
Fallen the music manifold

Of moving limbs and strange caresses.

And deadly passion that possesses
The magic ecstasy of these
Mad maidens, tender as blue seas.*

For this is passion, if not quite so pure as some we have
already seen, yet still passion of an unlustful nature.
In "The Flight" we find in the following lines a
still deeper glow :

The snow-bright weather
Calls us beyond the grassy downs, to be

Beside the sea.
The slowly breathing Ocean of the south.

Oh, make thy mouth
A rosy flame like the most perfect star

Whose kisses are
So red and ripe ! Oh, let thy limbs entwine

Like love with mine I '

In the third act of "The Argonauts," we find the
love of Medea is no longer passion, but fiery entranc-
ing lust :

At the midmost hour
His mind given up to sleepless muttering
Of charms not mine — decries Olympian —
All on a sudden he felt fervid arms
Flung round him, and a sweet hot body's rush
Lithe to embrace him, and a cataract
Of amber-scented hair hissing about
His head, and in the darkness two great eyes
Flaming above him, and the whole face filled
With fire and shapen as kisses. And those arms

' The Temple of the Holy Ghost, vol. i, p. 170.
' Mysteries: Lyrical and Dramatic, vol. i, p. 31.

THE MOTHER 129

And kisses and mad movements of quick love
Burnt up his being;, and his life was lost
In woman's love at last ! '■

This was the love, or rather lust, of "that filthy
sorceress."

We are now rapidly approaching the realms of the
abnormal ; for good and evil are the toys of love as
well as those of fate.

The nymph and the satyr, the fair and the faulty alike are
the guests of these amorous shades.^

The virility of lust is vividly illustrat'^d in "The
Blood-Lotus " :

Foam whips their reeking lips, and still the flower-witch nestles

to my lips,
Twines her swart lissome legs and hips, half serpent and half

devil, till

My whole self seems to lie in her; her kisses draw my breath;

my face
Loses its lustre in the grace of her quick bosom ; sinister

The raving spectres reel; I see beyond my Circe's eyes no

shape
Save vague cloud-measures that escape the dance's whirling

witchery.

Clothed with ray flower-bride I sit, a harlot in a harlot's dress,
And laugh with careless wickedness.

And with our laughter's nails refix his torn flesh faster to the

wood.
And with more cruel zest make good the shackles of the

Crucifix.'

' The Argonauts, vol. ii, p. 100.

' Mysteries : Lyrical and Dramatic, vol. i, p. 90.

'' Oracles, vol. ii, p. 14.

K

I30 THE STAR IN THE WEST

The nymphomaniac, the Lesbian, the man afflicted
with pathic neurosis, satyriasis or priapism is no
worse than any other maniac. True, the pornophobic
Mrs. Grundy cries shame as she squints askew
through the half-closed fingers of her hand, but we
refuse to see why this pudibonderie of the old " Unco
gude " should make the discussion of "nympho-
maniacs " a tabooed subject, whilst she trumpets from
the top of her holy bordel (St. Paul's) deafening blasts
of chaste (!) "bibliomania." Often these unfortunates
are of noble and generous character, who, striving
against their fearful adversity, have not the strength
of will to cast off and slay the dragon of their despair.
The horror of this mental struggle is well depicted in
" Jephthah " when Jared says :

Those eyes upon me, torturing my soul

And threatening revenge ? Those fingers gross,

Purple, and horrible, to blister me

With infamous tearing at my throat. O Hell !

Vomit thy monsters forth in myriads

To putrefy this fair green earth with blood.

But make not me the devilish minister

Of such a deed as this ! '

Such was the almost frenzied exclamation of Jared,
when he tried to shake off the awful power that was
urging him to become participator in the murder of
an innocent girl; and such is also often the terrible
struggle that is waged in the mind of the sexual invert.
Impelled by energies sometimes in-bred, sometimes
self-made, and sometimes but mere matters of locality
and education, how often does he struggle — and in
vain!

' Jephthah, vol. i, p. 84.

THE MOTHER 131

This terrible form of vice, chameleon-like, assumes
many colours, one of the principal being that of
pleasure under the guise of pain. In such cases utter
satiety of the ordinary forms of pleasure gives birth to
the desire for the pain which was once dreaded, and
the pleasure that the individual once experienced in
himself, and also the pleasure he felt was being ex-
perienced by the participator of his actions, changes,
growing little by little from a spark into a flaming
volcano of scorching pain, which he alone seeks, find-
ing new pleasures in the pain he himself endures, and
fresh pleasures in the pain he himself inflicts. This is
Lust. Peopled with all the horrors of inversion, we pass
from the simple realms of prostitution, to the dismal
Kingdoms of Sodom and Lesbos. Paederasts and
Tribades flock round us, yet we break away from
them only to enter the foul jaws of the sexual hell of
shrieking flagellants, who rush upon us, as obscene
Masochists grovel at our feet ; far into its depths we
sink, and there at the altar of Phallommeda sits a foul
vulture gloating over a corpse ; and its name is
Necrophilia.

Into the realms of sexual-neurasthenia Aleister
Crowley takes us, and it is necessary that he should.
His religion, his philosophy, and his psychology, all
point to an ultimate blending of our extreme per-
fections and imperfections — vice and virtue — in one
great monistic unity. He that would be wise must
know all things, all things that his transient life can
enable him to grasp. In the age which produced
Rabelais and Boccaccio, vice was flagrantly open, and
the lust which the early Christians had first opposed
and secondly absorbed, slowly burnt within the society
of their days, till it burst out in the lecherous flames

132 THE STAR IN THE WEST

of a libidinous papacy. Many witty and lascivious
books, which in those times were openly enjoyed, have
been handed down to us. In the north the puritanic
upheaval, still so felt, set in ; and in its first stages it
probably was strictly anti-vicious, but in its second
merely a screen to hide vice from the public gaze.
This, in its turn, led to the good feeling a disgust for
the bad, which in our age has developed into an in-
born shame which condemns open vice, but tolerates,
even endows it, when hidden. Open vice, unscreened
and esotericised by religion, would have in the sequence
of events led to an open feeling of disgust, for Nature
never permits man to borrow without paying back,
the general settlement day will always sooner or later
arrive, and then a new epoch of time will be heralded in.
Secret vice is the very worst form of vice ; like a hidden
gin we fall betwixt its jaws unawares. The crass and
studied silence that mothers and fathers maintain over
their children as regards all subjects of sex is probably
responsible for fifty per cent : and more of all the
sexual crimes and sexual ills of the present day.
When mankind has grasped the fact that its organs
of reproduction are no more disgusting than its
organs of respiration, it will then have grasped a
greater truth than all philosophies have ever pro-
mulgated, than all religions have ever revealed. "And
they were both naked, the man and his wife, and
were not ashamed": THIS IS VIRTUE. "And the
eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that
they were naked" : THIS IS VICE.

Know Thyself, Be Thyself, Honour Thyself, are the
three greatest commandments we can follow. This
truth, universal and in its totality, Crowley thunders
forth midst sunshine and lightning. If, it is good to

THE MOTHER 133

kiss, then is it also good to know where kisses may
lead to. We have already seen them rising upward
from youth through the passion of maturity, concrete
and abstract, earthly and spiritual ; now let us turn
about and descend the slippery road of lust, so essential
to- the basic knowledge of the good.

Among the extraordinary antipathies and sym-
pathies of the human mind, few are so startling as
the frequent attraction of contraries. Good attracts
bad, and bad good, in the love-history of life over and
over again shall we find this :

Have they divined
This simplest spirit-bond,
The joy of some bad woman's deadly liiss ; '

In the " Lesbian Hell" we see those white unsated
women, and in "The Fatal Force" one so flushed
with lust, that she has become blind to reality :

Then said the goddess: " I indeed am pure
In my impurity ; immaculate
In misconception ; maiden in my whoredom ;
Chaste in my incest, being made a god
Through my own strength.^

Thus she spoke to the assembled princes and peoples
of Egypt, when sixteen seasons past she sat crowned,
naked, exultant, pregnant with the child of her own
son's begetting. Awed by the enormity of her lust,
the multitudes worship their Phaedrian queen :

But the mood passed, and we see
A lecherous woman whose magician power
Is broken, and the balance of her mind
Made one with the fool's bauble, and her wand
That was of steel and fire, like a reed, snapped ! ^

' Mysteries: Lyrical and Dramatic, vol. i, p. 104.
"^ The Fatal Force, vol. i, p. 143. ^ Ibid.

134 THE STAR IN THE WEST

Once again we see her, Ratoum, Queen of Egypt,
before the coflSn which is supposed to contain the
child of her incest, but which holds in reality her
leprous and long-forgotten husband. She is maddened
with lust and religious frenzy, and stands entranced
till the leper rises as from the dead, and S'afi, the
child of her whoredom, tears oif his mask and
shrieks :

I am the hideous poison of thy veins
And foulest fruit of thy incestuous womb.^

" I am thy mother," is her answer; so, even in her
frenzied madness, the greatest force in nature asserts
itself. He stabs her, and stabs himself ! such also is
filial love.''

In " The Mother's Tragedy " the characters are
practically reversed. Ulric, who ravishes Cora, his
mother, even sinks deeper in the mire of lust than
Ratoum. It is a curious case of love baulked turning
to the foulest lust. He is passionately in love with
her, lustfully in love ; all the exuberance of his youth
runs fire in his veins ; he sees in the object of his
adoration — as Percy saw in Angela — the only waters
that would quench his flaming desire. He knows not
Cora to be his mother ; Cora Vavasour of the halls,
and himself her bastard son.

My wife ! O Cora, I have loved you so !

My heart is like a fountain of the sea.

I burn, I tremble; in my veins there swims

A torrid ecstasy of madness. Ah !

Ah, God ! I kiss you, kiss you ! O you faint !

Sweetheart, my passion overwhelms your soul !

' The Fatal Force, vol. i, p. 150,

* Compare story of Semiramis and Ninyas.

THE MOTHER 135

Your virginal sweet spirit cannot reach
My fury. . . .'

Thus in the intoxication of his desire he raves, in
her silence he sees her affection, and in the terror of
her eyes her love.

Cora is horror-stricken : " you beast ! " "you fool ! "
" I am defiled." He stands dazed and wondering.
Then in the following pages she tells him : "I am
the mother of thy bastard birth"; he prays, he
threatens, and shrieking hurls insult on insult at her :

Me, the sole pledge of your debaucheries,
You keep — your love, the mere maternity
You share with swine and cattle ! . . .

I love you still
With carnal love and spiritual love !
And I will have you, by the living God,
To be my mistress. If I fail in this ,
Or falter in this counsel of despair,
May God's own curses dog me into hell,
And mine own life perpetuate itself
Through all the ages of eternity.
Amen ! Amen ! Come, Cora, to my heart ! ^

Madeline, whom Cora had hoped to have made
Ulric's bride, appears, and for a moment his mad fury
slackens only to burst out again, as he drags Cora
from the room. When she re-enters her voice is
hoarse and horrible :

O Phaedra ! lend me of thy wickedness.
Lest I go mad to contemplate myself ! ^

Then turning to Madeline — young, pretty, and foolish
— who bids her seek help from the Mother of God,
' ' Our Lady of the seven stars " says :

' The Mother's Tragedy, vol. i, p. 159.

" Ibid. vol. i, p. 163. ' Ibid. vol. i, p. 164.

136 THE STAR IN THE WEST

Can you not see? I am cut off from God !
Loathsome bull-men in their corruption linked
Whisper lewd fancies in my ear. Great fish,
Monstrous and flat, with vile malignant eyes.
And crawling beetles of gigantic strength,
Crushed, mangled, moving, are about me. Go !
Go ! do not touch ths carcass of myself
That is abased, defiled, abominable.'

Then Ulric enters, evidently now totally mad ; the
fearful power of his Neronic lust has reft asunder
the last thread of his sanity ; in his hand he carries
a razor, first he slays Madeline, and then, at his
mother's bidding, himself:

A blood-grey vapour and a scorpion steam
To poison the unrighteous life of God ! ^

Thus does this fearful tragedy end. Gruesome with
lust and cruelty, Ulric, a horrible perversion, overcome
by the violence of his desires, a second Amnon, a
second de Sade. His ideal once at least partially pure,
broke, as the truth burst on his ear, into a wild and
fearful nightmare ; and in his brutal fury we find that
perhaps the Sadism of to-day is but an Avatar of those
past days, when our progenitors, like some still ex-
isting savages, carried on their courtship with club
and spear, and solemnized their marriage with rape
and ravishment.

Still one more phase of perverse love remains for
us to study; the curious lust of man for woman as
depicted in "Jezebel," a curious manifestation of what
is known as Masochism, which after the death of the
object of its fascination, grows almost into the vam-
pire desire of necrophilia. In "A Saint's Damnation,"
which is included under the same cover, we see the

' The Mother's Tragedy, vol. i, p. 165. ^ Ihid.

THE MOTHER 137

power of Jove caught in the arms of restraint slowly
smoulder into a burning desire :

Passion to feed upon your shoulders bare,

And pass the dewy twilight of our sin
In the intolerable flames of hair.

Give thee my body as a fire to hold —

love, no words, no songs — your breast my bower ! ^

In "Jezebel " we find the same desire, but unfanned
by restraint, in whose place stands a woman's disdain.
He, the prophet, goes to curse her — but loves her
instead :

For lo ! she saw me, and beheld

My trembling lips curled back to curse,

Laughed with strong scorn, whose music knelled
The empire of God's universe.

And on my haggard face upturned

She spat ! Ah God ! how my cheek burned !

Then as a man betrayed, and doomed

Already, I arose and went.
And wrestled with myself, consumed

With passion for that sacrament
Of shame. From that day unto this
My cheek desires that hideous ^iss.

Her hate, her scorn, her cruel blows.
Fill my whole life, consume my breath ;

Her red-fanged hatred in me glows,
I lust for her, and hell, and death.

1 see that ghastly look, and yearn
Toward the brands of her that burn. -

Sleep shuns him, and his parched throat thirsts for
the blood of her veins, " Aching with all the pangs of
night"; his vision grows more monstrous, a horrible

^ Jezebel: and other Tragic Poems, vol. i, p. 133.
^ Ibid. vol. i, pp. 1 30-13 1.

138 THE STAR IN THE WEST

psychopathic mist dims his mind, and all the love he
lavished on the body of the living woman turns to a
lust for her cadaver :

The spirit filled me. And behold!

I saw her dead stare to the shies,
1 came to her; she was not cold,

But burning with old infamies.
On her incestuous rnouth I fell,
And lost my soul for Jezebel.

They cast her forth on Naboth's field

Still living, in her harlot's dress ;
Her belly stript, her thigfhs concealed,

For shame's sake and for love's no less.
Night falls ; the gaping crowds abide
No longer by her stiifening side.

"Ah! prophet, come to mock at me
And gloat on mine exceeding pain? "

" Nay but to give my soul to thee,
And have thee spit at me again ! "

She smiled — I know she smiled — she sighed.

Bit my lips through, and drank, and died !

My veins poured out her marriage cup.

For holy water her cruel tongue ;
For blessing of white hands raised up,

These perfumed infamies unsung ;
For God's breath, her sharp tainted breath ;
For marriage-bed, the bed of death.

The host is lifted up. Behold

The vintage spilt, the broken bread !

I feast upon the cruel cold

Pale body that was ripe and red.

Only, her head, her palms, her feet,

I kissed all night, and did not eat. '

Jezebel, vol. i, pp. 131-132.

THE MOTHER 139

We have passed through many fields, many groves,
many wildernesses ; we have crossed the pure snowy
mountains of Chastity, and the boiling seas of Passion,
losing ourselves in not a few of those intricate and
unknown by-paths which lead to trackless wastes
and gloomy abysms. Aleister Crowley has pointed
us the way, twined round the Tree of Knowledge he
has offered us fruit, and we have eaten of it with face
smiling or awry; we have become as gods knowing
good and evil, and having become gods with much
striving against adversity, may some day become men;
for to become a god is but to become as the image
created in the brain of man, but to become a man is
to become a progenitor of gods ; and then perchance
we may realize the sublimity of the Great Mother-
hood, whose children are as one, a flaming crown of
glory twined and interwoven with roses both white
and red.

This mingling of the passionate and the chaste we
find is the new ideal that Crowley flashes before our
dazzled sight. Away with Mary, immaculate Mother
of Christ: away with Messalina, incestuous prophetess
of Lust. Away! Away! To the West, to the East,
till they meet in some flaming region of equatorial
fury, and flashipg interfuse and interblend.

Once again must a prophet of the Lord arise and
wed a wife of whoredoms, who hath committed great
whoredom, departing from the Lord. Once again
must Hosea expire on the crimson lips of Corner, and
from the womb of a harlot must the Christ be reborn
a woman, wise, beautiful, and young ; who is both
Circe and Diana, Isis and Aphrodite, in whose veins
course all the fury of Medea, all the abominations of
Canidia, who revels in the infernal rites of Sagana and

HO THE STAR IN THE WEST

Locusta, and yet is vestal and virgin ; white as the
driven snow, pure as a mountain rill. One with the
pale Mother of Bethlehem and the scarlet harlot of
the City of Abominations. Then will the storm-clouds
part, and the smoke and steam of the earth vanish,
and the social harlot, whose painted buttocks have
heaved and hog-wallowed through the centuries, shall
be seized and hurled from the rock of Tarpeia, and
smothered with the goatish kisses of her lechery midst
the charnel glitter of her gold. And the Vestal-
courtezan will rise before us, purple and white, clothed
in the sun, and set between the moon and the twelve
stars of heaven. So another league will be accom-
plished toward that city which is God.

We have already seen in " The Mother's Tragedy "
and " The Fatal Force," that the love of the mother,
though it could not cause the shadow to travel back-
wards one degree on the face of the dial, it at least
clothed in a white garment of chastity, not only the
amorous music-hall artiste, but even the incestuous
queen of Egypt. And though " Jezebel " did not love
as they loved, her power of loving many exonerated
her want of love for one or a few. She like the Circe
of old who turned the followers of Ulysses into swine,
herself fell a victim entangled in those same meshes
she had spun wherein to entrap her unwary fellows.
"A woman who is without love," writes L6vi, "ab-
sorbs and degrades all who come near her; she who
loves, on the other hand, diffuses enthusiasm, nobility,
and life."'

In her we see a contorted symbol of wifehood,
whilst in the latter cases, and especially in "The Fatal

^ The Doctrine of Transcendent Magfic, p. 125.

THE MOTHER 141

Force," we find that of Motherhood. The true wife
must sacrifice her children before the shrine of her
lover, and the true mother must sacrifice her lover on
the altar of her children. This is no paradox, no
riddle, no twisting of words ; for Crowley offers us in
the glittering chalice of Eternity the sacred blood of
the Bull, the Second Christ; and as the first, the
Lamb of God, sprang from the immaculate womb of
the Virgin-Mother, so shall this second incarnation
spring blood-red from the snowy lips of the great
Supernal Mother, androgynous, the Circe-Isis of the
ages.

In "Alice, an Adultery,'' we see a woman passionate
in her love, strenuous in her affection, yet in the end
failing by abandoning her lover for her children. Not
so, however, in " Rosa Inferni," wherein we feel, as
we read, a ferocity of passion which burns into us
like a hail of molten glass :

Aha ! the veil is riven !
Beneath the smiling- mask of a young bride
Languorous, luscious, melancholy-eyed;
Beneath the gentle raptures, hints celestial
Of holy secrets, kisses like soft dew.
Beneath, the amorous mystery, I view
The surer shape, a visage grim and bestial,
A purpose sly and deadly, a black shape,
A tiger snarling, or a grinning ape
Resolved by every devilish device
Upon my murder. "^

A vampire she rises over her lover :

I see below the beautiful low brow
(Low too for cunning, like enough !) your lips,
A scarlet splash of murder. From them drips
This heart's blood ; you have fed your fill on me. ^

1 Rosa Inferni, vol. iii, p. 91. '' Ibid. vol. iii, p. 92.

142 THE STAR IN THE WEST

Further on in this same series of poems we come
across an almost more lurid description of this Mes-
saHne in "The Jilt," in which her new-found lover
feasts off the agony of her last victim, which still
moistens her blood-red lips :

His death lends savour to our passionate life;

His is the heart I taste upon your tongue ;
His death-spasms our love-spasms, my wife;

His death-songs are the love-songs that you sung !

Ah ! Sweet, each kiss I drink from you is warm
With the dear life-blood of a man — a man !

The scent of murder lures me, like a charm
Tied by some subtlety Canidian.

Ay ! as you suck my life out into bliss.

Its holier joy is in the deadlier thirst
That drank his life out into the abyss

Of torture endless, endless and accurst.

I know him little ; liking what I know.

But you — you offer me his flesh and blood.
I taste it — never another vintage owe.

Nor bid me sup upon another food !

This is our marriage ; firmer than the root
Of love or lust could plant our joy, my wife,

We stand in this, the purple-seeded fruit
Of yon youth's fair and pitiable life. '

So we see before us a curious form, at times cold
as the marble statue of Pygmalion, and then, when
the kiss of Venus had incarnadined those chill lips,
all life and passion, transforming those ivory breasts
into sharp points of liquid fire, and those still thighs
into all the subtlety of twin snakes. Yet that mouth,
breathing the purple fire of love, or cold as the dusty

' The Jilt, vol. lii, pp. 99, 100.

THE MOTHER 143

lips of the age-worn Sphinx, is one — Rosa Inferni,
Rosa CoeH, for that which is below is as that which
is above. The latter has still to be published, but the
petals of its bursting bud have already in many a fair
verse made bright the pages of this essay. 'Twixt
these twain we find Rosa Mundi, "the keystone of
the Royal Arch of Sex " : '

Single in love and aim,
Double in form and name,^

that arch which rests on the two great pillars of
Solomon's temple, black and white, and contrary, yet
their power is one, for they are the limbs of God.

" Rosa Mundi" stands before us crowned, naked,
and wonderful. Neither Alice nor Archais, neither
Ratoum nor Cora, neither Venus nor Isis, yet the
woven filament of all these glowing petals into one
flaming Rose of glory ; in whose sceptred-heart burns
the white phallus of God, and whose jewelled crown
is crimson with the lips of the passionate daughters
of Men.

Rose of the World !

Red glory of the secret heart of Love !

Red flame, rose-red, most subtly curled

Into its own infinite flower, all flowers above !

Its flower in its own perfumed passion,

Its faint sweet passion, folded and furled

In flower fashion ;

The Rose of Dew, the Rose of Love and Night,

The Rose of Silence, covering as with a vesture

The solemn unity of things

Beheld in the mirror of truth,

The Rose indifferent to God's gesture.

The Rose on moonlight wings

' Rosa Mundi, vol. iii, p. $2. '' Ibid. vol. iii, p. 54.

144 THE STAR IN THE WEST

That flies to the House of Fire,

The Rose of Honey-in- Youth!

Ah! No dim mystery of desire

Fathoms this gulf ! No light invades

The mystical musical shades

Of a faith in the future, a dream, of the day,

When athwart the dim glades

Of the forest a ray

Of sunlight shall fia^h and the dew die away!

Rose of the World, Rose of the Uttermost

Abode of Glory, Rose of the High Host

Of Heaven, mystic, rapturous Rose !

The extreme passion glows

Deep in this breast; thou knowest (and love knows).'

Thus we end our chapter which we have called
"The Mother." And as Diana, Luna, and Hecate
are one, so Rosa Mundi, Rosa Coeli, Rosa Inferni,
unite Triformis in one great trinity in unity. And as
the Moon kisses the Sea, so does Diana embrace the
wave-born Aphrodite, as she rises from the blue foam,
star of the Deep ; she who pours back into the ocean
of Eternity the pure waters of inexhaustible chastity
mingled with the never-dying flames of inextinguish-
able love.

At last she has been disclosed to us, she concerning
whom it was prophesied in the beginning of Time ;
and as the hollow sobs of the dying years have rolled
back sonorous, rumbling, and echoing, into the sound-
less depths of seonial infinity, she who was promised
has at length been revealed ; she who will crush the
head of that old serpent, who has so long bruised the
heel of the children of men who were born in the
knowledge of good and of evil.

Rosa Mundi, vol. iii, pp. 51-55.

V

The Chapter known as

Ube ®l^ Bottle

In which chapter it is related : how it once contained
the dregs of many casks, and how they have all long
since gone dry ; and its uselessness, and how
it stinketh when it be uncorked, and Its
unprofitableness, also the unfit-
ness thereof to hold the ' ' New
Wine," of which
hereafter.

ZDe ®lb Bottle

WHAT is religion? In its primitive form, meta-
tarsals ; in its ultimate, metaphysics. Our
ancestors would walk through the lightning and
thunder of the uncivilized day, with a string of
charmed knuckle-bones slung round their throats ;
whilst we in our turn walk through the drizzle and
fog of the present decivilized night, with a rosary of
ideals twined round our minds: one worshipped a
bogey, the other a bogus. O/ sancta simplicitas : homo
indeed is sapiens! Have we progressed? Not one
whit. Worship is at all times and everywhere one
and the same, an insult to the offerer and the receiver
alike ; sacrifice, the egotism of usurers ; prayer, the
misdirected energy of idiots ; ceremony but an excuse
for vice ; and dogma but a legitimized imposition.
Such is religion !

Why, then, has man ever sought this Moloch of
his nights, shedding o'er it his own blood, and drench-
ing it with that of others, if it prove but an incubus
of sorrow and despair? Firstly, because most men
are fools; secondly, because those who are not are
knaves.

I take no heed of trickery played
By cunning' mad Elijah's skill,

When the great test of strength was made
On Carmel's melancholy hill,

And on the altar stone the liar

Cried " Water," and poured forth Greek fire! '

' Ahab, vol. ii, p. 123.

148 THE STAR IN THE WEST

If we could be optimistic enough to believe in a
(semi-)omnipotent power (pure omnipotency is ana-
chronistic), we should believe this malady were in-
flicted on man as are the measles, the croup, and the
chicken-pox, so as to stimulate romance, and retard
that ultimate uninteresting state perfection. This not
being so, we can only suggest that being descended
from the flat-nosed simiae, besides being generally
flat all round, man must have lost his wits with his
tail, both being now exceedingly rudimentary. Having
lost his tail, he could no longer swing in the ethereal
blue ; and then, losing his wits, grew a mental tail,
and swung in the deep inane, devising the ideal of
discomfort, wherein all pleasures should be considered
as evil, and all pains as exceedingly good ; chewing
aloes he swore they were as melligenous as the sugar
cane, called black white, white black, and this fair
world the abode of his satanic majesty ; beat his wife,
swore at the ' kids,' and kicked the cat over the garden
wall. Not being able to walk on his head, with his
feet in the air, he, however, did and continues to do
his best to carry what remains of his fungoid organ
of thought as low as he possibly can, his desires in
his stomach, and his thoughts in the vicinity of his
prostate gland.

There was a time when man did not know how to
cook his dinner ; we sincerely hope there will be a
time when he ceases to cook his thoughts, but that
time, in spite of science and art, is in the far here-
after.

Some people labour under the idea that a genera-
tion or two hence the world will be sprawling at the
feet of Reason instead of those pf God. Possibly, yet
God is still far from being a centenarian, and our

THE OLD BOTTLE 149

heavenly Father bids well to rival our earthly Parr ;
but as long as we sprawl, what matters it what we
sprawl before, if it be the shin-bone of an ass, or the
pineal gland of our wretched imagination ? Whatever
man has touched he has spoilt : one day he was struck
with the mystic poetry of the waves, and he promptly
hocussed slimy monsters from out the deep ; gazing
on his lithe and winsome daughter, he held her head
under the green flood to satiate the rapacity of the
offspring of his deluded imagination, who (he judged)
appreciated his dinner, as well as he did himself.
Having devised religion, he by degrees fell into such
excesses of worship, that religion bid well to exter-
minate his whole wretched race; thereupon he dis-
closed science, which, when it has destroyed his
former hobby, will in its turn run riot over all, till it
also becomes such a pest, that it too, will have to
give way to something better. Never contented, man
ultimately finds that his double collection of manna
rots. What the end will be no one knows, and few
care; that we shall ever reach a state verging on
perfection is most improbable ; man could not stand
it for long unless his worldly span were one of unam-
bitious affluence, and his heavenly one of spasmodic
sensuality and forgetfulness. To have plenty of money
and no ambitions, to eat like a hog, sleep like a hog,
and to breed like a hog ; to be in a perpetual state of
priapism, and to fall into slumbersome forgetfulness
just when the pleasant is beginning to pall, and then
to wake again to all the fury of desire. These two
states, if we carefully dissect the corpse of religion,
we shall find to lie at its basic foundation.

On turning now to the works before us, we find
traced therein an elaborate system rising from the

I50 THE STAR IN THE WEST

fear of primitive man to the veneration of his present-
day offspring. Fear, the basal foundation of all gods,
found a subtle soil in Ignorance ; Ignorance reacted
on God, producing Superstition ; Superstition, Cruelty ;
Cruelty, all the tigerish longings of the day and the
hoggish gratifications of the night.

Pessimism is necessarily the foundation of all re-
ligion ; for if man were normally optimistic he would
not have conceived such a hierarchy of tyrants as
that of his gods. The man who formerly cut himself
with flints before a lump of stone or clay, is in no way
more foolish than he who prays to an omnipotent con-
ception ; the former was jealous and exacting, and so
is the latter, the former a thing, the latter an idea,
and both an ideal. This evolution is very vividly de-
scribed in the poem entitled "The Growth of God " :

Fear grows, and torment ; and distracted pain

Must from sheer agony some respite find ;
When some half-maddened miserable brain

Projects a god in his detesting mind.
A god who made him — to the core all evil,

In his own image — and a God of Terror ;
A vast foul nightmare, an impending devil ;

Compact of darkness, infamy, and error.

Some bestial woman, beaten by her mates,

In utter fear broke down the bar of reason ;
Shrieked, crawled to die ; delirium abates

By some good chance her terror in its season,
Her ravings picture the cessation of

Such life as she had known : her mind conceives
A God of Mercy, Happiness and Love ;

Reverses life and fact : and so believes.'

This last line practically contains the fundamental
basis of all religion. Man finding that Nature was but

' The Temple of the Holy Ghost, vol. i, p. 179.

THE OLD BOTTLE 151

a thousand-headed hydra, for ever battling with him
on the field of the world, fearing her awful powers
and dim mysteries, reversed facts which were so un-
palatable to him, and drinking deep of the cup of joy
during those short moments when it was proffered to
his lips, dimly or vividly saw through the intoxicating
fumes cloudy realms of perpetual libation, of hope, and
of glorious expectations. Heaven and then Hell. The
former first, for man is essentially selfish; having
found a fat billet for himself, it was not long before
he found a lean one for his neighbour :

To divide my devotees
From those who scorned me to the close :
A worm, a fire, a thirst for these ;
A harp-resounding heaven for those ! '

The primary object of existence is to keep alive,
and all heavens, hells, paradises, gehennas, valhallas,
nirvanas, and other abodes of the dead, have never
for long exercised such a superabundance of power
as to crush and extinguish the flaming desire for ex-
istence. The fools having devised God with jam for
the good in heaven, were not long in devising Satan
with a pickled birch for the naughty in hell. Those
who were not fools and who found their bread un-
palatably dry, found that butter could be supplied free
of cost by literally doing nothing. Any one familiar
with a native city in India is aware of the vast hordes
of indolent fakirs who practically do nothing except
stand still and gaze vacantly into the clouds utter-
ing, "Rama," "Hanuman," and before they drop
their eyes their bowls are full of atta and dhal. Hence
priests and kings, those truly greedy anthropophagi :

^ Songs of the Spirit, vol. i, p. 43.

152 THE STAR IN THE WEST

The vale is black with priests. They fight,

Wild beasts, for food,
The orphan's gold, the widow's right,

The virgin's snood.
All in their maws are crammed within the night

That hides their chosen wood.
Where through the blackness sounds the sickening noise
Of cannibals that gloat on monstrous joys.'

Feeding perhaps first on man's body, the priest soon
found, after investing his victim with an immortal
soul, that the soul would form an excellent basis for
blackmail, enabling man to buy off the terrors of hell
through the medium of the priest who held the keys
of heaven:

. . . still death reigns, and God and priests are fed,
Man's blood for wine, man's flesh for meat and bread.^

And these priests are not dead yet.

As the human race throve so did their gods, the old
savage of man's early thoughts grew, and growing
became more evil, as their gods so were men, and as
men so were their gods, the one continually acting
and reacting on the other :

Of obscene deities and apish men,
Rivalling their gods in petty filthiness.'

Gods sprang from gods :

For the old gods indeed go down to death,
But the new gods arise from rottenness.*

The first cause, a pervading terror, was grand in its
wilfulness compared with the degraded images which

' Mysteries: Lyrical and Dramatic, vol. i, p. iz6.

' Ibid. vol. i, p. io6.

' The Tale of Archais, vol. i, p. 19.

* The Fatal Force, vol. i, p. 143.

THE OLD BOTTLE 153

soon eclipsed man's reason, monopolizing worship
and exacting prayer :

What folly can compare
With such stupidity as prayer? ^

Crowley very truly remarks in that battering-ram
of religious destruction, "Pentecost" — a witty note
is appended, quoted from the "Sydney Bulletin,"
which suggested, that instead of perpetually worrying
the Almighty for rain, the people should pray once
and for all for a big range of mountains in Central
Australia, which would of course supply rain auto-
matically^ — that man cannot elude fate by such a
paltry dodge ; for even the god of our imaginings is
not quite such an ass as all that. The messenger in
"Jephthah " most sensibly remarked, when he rushed
with the news of the enemy's approach into the as-
sembly of Israel :

My lords, take heed now, prayer is good to save
While yet the foemen are far off; but now
They howl and clamour at our very gates.'

Which in other words simply means, as long as man
does not see or understand he will pray; when he does,
he won't.

Another juggle to elude fate is sacrifice. Sacrifice
and prayer have ever run in harness together under
the whistling of the priestly lash. " I will brain you
if you refuse to render tribute to me," said the primi-
tive chief to his primitive neighbour ; "I will put you
in jail if you won't pay me your taxes," says the
modern government to the modern citizen. And as

' The Sword of Song, Pentecost, vol. ii, p. 178.
^ Ibid. vol. ii, p. 209.
' Jephthah, vol. i, p. 69.

154 THE STAR IN THE WEST

religion could not possibly restrain her octopus tenta-
cles of cupidity from the game of grab, she also hisses,
" Pray to God and he will tie a knot in his bandana
and perhaps remember it some day; but above all,
sacrifice to me, or by Jove ! I will sacrifice you : " and
the fool, even in his folly, thought it were better to
lose his wits than his brains, and his turnips than his
turnip; so he dug and he dug, and he slew and he
slew, religion growing fatter and fatter, spawning
churches and breeding sects, till unfortunate man
found himself so hedged in by the spiritual, that in
order to maintain his life in this world he had to
acknowledge the Church's supreme authority, and
grovel before her in the dust of degradation. Crowley
gives a curious example of this growth, and the ulti-
mate sameness of all religions in that gruesome and
weird drama, "The God-Eater."
Maurya the sister of Criosda says:

Criosda, ever the same ! The old world runs
On wheels of laughter for us little ones ;
To you, whose shoulders strain, the chariot seems
A poised fiend &ogg'mg you to hell. '

Criosda, the self-intoxicated God-Eater, drunk on the
name of blood, slays his sister, and feasts in true re-
ligious frenzy oif her corpse — a veritable black mass :

Criosda. With red lips reeking- from the sweet foul feast,
I sang in tuneless agony the spell ;

Rolled athwart space the black words : then some force
Tore me : I heard the tears drop in my heart.
I heard the laughter" of some utmost god
Hid in the middle of matter. That was I,
The hideous laughter of the maniac laugh
When loathing makes the bed to lust, and twine

^ The God-Eater, vol. ii, p. 131.

THE OLD BOTTLE 155

The limbs of agony about the trunk

Of torture — rapture stabbing- through — Maurya !

Ay, that was I ; and I the weeping wolf

That howls about this hell that is my heart ;

And I the icy and intangible

That beholds all, and is not.'

Looking into the crystal globe he sees the future two
thousand years after the horrid murder. The deed
has thriven into a religion, and the victim into a god.

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be:
world without end.^

mutters Rupha the hag of eternity, as Criosda falls
dead before the mummy of the murdered girl, his
sister Maurya:

Murder a mode
And love a mode of the unknown that is.
That not thyself nor I can ever see.^

A fitting cry indeed to herald us into the pustulous
domains of Jahveh and his murdered Son.

In dealing with the Christian faith, Aleister Crowley
by no means goes simply baldheaded for it like
the unread secularist of the sixpenny platform ; for,
we find a distinct growth from a reverential regard
towards its founder, to a satirical disregard for him,
and his final dismissal in a jest. Such a mental pro-
gression is only natural ; from the sublime irrationality
of a de Kempis the student will almost inevitably,
even unwittingly, pass through the adulations of a

' The God-Eater, vol. ii, p. 137.

^ Ibid. vol. ii, p. 139.

^ Ibid. vol. ii, p. 138. The gods of the ancients were all
iramolaters of men, and loved blood. Moloch only differed
from Jahveh by lack of orthodoxy, and the god of Jepfathah
had similar mysteries to those of Belus.

iS6 THE STAR IN THE WEST

Renan, before he assumes the biting satireof a Saladin,
or the poetic iconoclasm of a Swinburne.

Christ, firstly, as the Son of God, is divine, omni-
potent, in fact he is God ; secondly, as the Son of
Man, is noble, generous, lovable, in fact, man ; but,
thirdly, as the offspring of the carnalities of a Byzan-
tine mob, which is the true Christ of history, he
assumes a vampire form, a horror fed on the blood
of children, the virility of youths, the chastity of
maidens. Hardly a single evil of the present day, if
traced back a few hundred years, and frequently not
half so long as that, but finds its birth in some cor-
ruption practised by the Harlot of the seven hills, or
the Monster of the six wives. It is only necessary to
study such works as those of Buckle or Draper, of
White or Stewart Ross, or better still, if time permits,
those of ecclesiastical historians, written by the pens
of divines, to become aware of the appalling gloom
that was cast over the splendour that was Greece,
and the grandeur that was Rome, in that dismal night
of a thousand years which lapped the Western world
in a sea of blood and tears. Ignorance crushed the
mind of Europe, as a hammer of lead, from the time
that Constantine — tyrant, murderer, and debauchee —
threw in his lot with the yelping mob of Constantin-
ople. On that fateful day a fiery cross shone in the
sky,' and to this day it has been our lot to carry its
cankerous form branded on our hearts and corroded
in our minds. Not till now are we waking from the
turbid dreams, the feverish lust, and dismal super-
stition, that sprang from the gaberlunzies of the
Suburra :

' In hoc signo vinces.

THE OLD BOTTLE 157

Tlie Lord^s Day.

The foolish bells with their discordant clang
Summon the harlot-ridden Hell to pray :
The vicar's snout is tuned ; the curates bray

Long gabbled lessons, and their noisy twang

Fills the foul worshippers with hate ; the fang
Of boredom crushes out the holy day,
Where whore and jobber sit and gloom, grown grey

For hating of each other ; the hours hang.'

And the pen of Crowley like that of Saladin, Swin-
burne, and Shelley, is but another douche of cold
water to wake the frowsy sleepers of the night, and
wash from their gluey eyes the nightmare of Christian
Supremacy.

In the earlier poems of Crowley, we find not only a
reverential handling of the Christ idea, but an almost
orthodox adoration for the Christ Himself. In the last
two verses of "Aceldama" this is strongly brought
out. "Thy love will stand while ocean winds en-
dure"; and again, "Here I abandon all myself to
thee." ^ In " Songs of the Spirit " we find this venera-
tion acutely portrayed, and the Christ as depicted in
"The Goad" closely resembles the one as described
in "The Farewell of Paracelsus to Aprile." Here is
a passage from each :

I contemplate the wound

Stabbed in the flanks of my dear silver Christ.
He hangs in anguish there ; the crown of thorns

Pierces that palest brow ; the nails drip blood ;
There is the wound ; no Mary by Him mourns,

There is no John beside the cruel wood ;
I am alone to kiss the silver lips ;

I rend my clothing for the temple veil ;

• The Temple of the Holy Ghost, vol. i, p. 202.
' Aceldama, vol. i, p. 6.

iS8 THE STAR IN THE WEST

My heart's black night must act the sun's eclipse ;
My groans must play the earthquake, . . .'

Still as I journey through the waste, I see

A silver figure more divine arise ;
The Christ usurps the horizon for me,

And He requickens the forgotten skies ;

His golden locks are burning on my eyes.
And he with rosy finger points the way,

The blood-wrought mystic path of Paradise,
That leads at last through yonder icy spray
Of Death to the blue vault of the undying day.^

In the last verse of " A Spring Snow Storm in
Wastdale,'" there grows a wavering doubt, which
leaps out furiously in the "Preliminary Invocation"
in "Jephthah," addressed to A. C. S., breaking the
shackles of the " improving idea " of Christ :

Let there be light ! — the desecrated tomb
Gaped as thy fury smote the Galilean.''

Almost a Shelleyan slur lies in the last of the above
words. He is no more the mystic Christ, or the gentle
Jesus, but merely a Galilean, of a tribe crude and de-
spised. Very different do we find Crowley's opinions,
in his later works, regarding this unfortunate fakir.
The glamour of enthusiastic and unsuspecting youth
soon disappears to be swallowed up in the reality of
a maturer understanding :

He took the universe on trust;

He reconciled the world below

With that above ; rolled eloquence

Steel-tired o'er reason's "why?" and "whence?"

' Songs of the Spirit, vol. i, p. 30.

^ Ibid. vol. i, p. 40. ' Ibid. vol. i, p. 43.

* Jephthah, vol. i, p. 64.

THE OLD BOTTLE 159

Discarded all proportion just,

And thundered in our ears " I know,"

And bellowed in our brains "ye must." '

In "Why Jesus Wept" bur eyes are startled with
the following horrid blasphemy, "The badger Jesus
skulketh in his holt," ' which, after all, is not a quarter
so blasphemous as to suppose that Jesus, the Son of
God, the Very God, resides in a loaf and a bottle, as
the Plymouth brethren did in the same satire — vide
scene xiii. Finally, instead of allowing this most un-
fortunate of unfortunate individuals to peacefully ascend
to heaven from two places simultaneously he unfeel-
ingly dismisses him, the Omnipotent, in a jest.'

Crowley further shows, by quoting the parable of
the sheep and the goats, that the historical (?) Christ
was to a great extent devoid of pity, and a little
further on in the same poem, "Ascension Day," that
he was but a cantankerous divider and obstreperous
upstart :

Give me omnipotence?

To call me God — I would exert

That power to heal creation's hurt ;

Not to divide my devotees

From those who scorned me to the close :

A worm, a fire, a thirst for these;

A harp-resounding heaven for those ! *

Concerning the mother of the eternal God, Crowley
has little to tell us, and the Blessed Virgin's affaire
du ccetir with the amiable Gabriel is but touched on
for a moment :

' The Sword of Song, Pentecost, vol. ii, p. 181.

* Why Jesus Wept, vol. iii, p. 40.

' The Sword of Song, Ascension Day, vol. ii, p. 163.

* Ibid. vol. ii, p. 158.

i6o THE STAR IN THE WEST

"Fear nothing, Mary! All is well!

I am the angel Gabriel. "

She bared her right breast; (query why?) '

etc., etc., vide Koran. But as regards that most irate
and truculent old gentleman, J. H. V. H., he has a
considerable amount to relate.

How "All Power can be All Wickedness," is a
question that not only strikes Crowley's brain as ex-
ceptionally incongruous, but must so strike all who
ever think at all. How God being Almighty as well
as Beneficent can tolerate such a world of suffering
as ours for one minute passes all understanding. The
God idea in its infancy, as we have already seen,
was the child of ignorance and revenge, and Jahveh,
in his turn, is but an emanation of this world idea, no
better than the rest :

Baal and Jehovah, Ashtoreth
And Chemosh and these Elohim,

Life's panders in the brothel, Death !
Cloudy imaginings, a dream

Built up of fear and words and woe.

All, all my soul must overthrow. "

Crowley further writes :

Nor can I see what sort of gain
God finds in this creating pain.^

' The Sword of Song, Pentecost, p. 60 ; vol. ii, p. 182.

According to Al Beidiwi, Gabriel blew into the bosom of
'Mary's shift, which he opened with his fingers, and his breath
reaching her womb, caused the conception.

It may also be remembered that the Spanish mare of Silius
Italicus was similarly impregnated by a certain gas or spirit in
the atmosphere.

^ Ahab, vol. ii, p. 123.

^ The Sword of Song, Pentecost, vol. ii, p. 172.

THE OLD BOTTLE i6i

But man the father of God did, for he was naturally
bloodthirsty, avaricious, and cruel, and man to-day
is but a veneered representative of his forefathers, still
suppliant at the feet of the phallic Jahveh :

That man to-day should not be weaned
Of worshipping so foul a fiend
In presence of the living Sun.'

But so it is, and so it will be for many a generation
yet to come ; cause and effect are but replicas of each
other, arid if the cause be ignorance, it is useless to
*look for the wisdom of Solomon in the effect; men's
gods are but gilded duplications of themselves, and
their ideal but the " resurrection pie " of past feasting.
Man loves the mysterious, and his god is but a poor
conjuring trick, as is shown in "Pentecost" — "a
mysterious way . . . God moves in to fix up his
Maskelyrie tricks." ^

Leaving now these satirical poems for other works
of Crowley's, we shall find a deep, yet in no way less,
intense hatred for the sham ideal of all religions. In
" Jephthah " we listen to Jephthah praying to Jehovah,
god of hosts, for victory over the Ammonites, not-
withstanding the fact that should victory be his lot a
general violation of all the virgins of Ammon was to
follow :

And turn their own devouring blade
On city fired and violate maid,'

Chemosh was probably no whit better than Jahveh,
and Jephthah has almost as firm a belief in the former

1 The Sword of Song, Pentecost, vol. ii, p. 177.
^ Ibid. vol. ii, p. 168.
' Jephthah, vol. i, p. 74.
M

i62 THE STAR IN THE WEST

as in the latter.^ In fact, all were as the ground from
which they had sprung and on which they grew.

In "The Triumph of Man," a magnificent poem in
heroic verse, Crowley unfurls the oriflamme of Reason
against the bunting of God, leading us on from the
realms of gloating anthropophagi to the ' ' magical
brotherhood of kings." The absolute crown and king-
dom of desire, the one God sealed in the seas and be-
tokened in the winds. " The Spirit of Mankind ! "

Before the darkness, earlier than being.

When yet thought was not, shapeless and unseeing,

Made misbegotten of deity on death.

There brooded on the waters the strange breath

Of an incarnate hatred. Darkness fell

And chaos, from prodigious gulphs of hell.

Life, that rejoiced to travail with a man,

Looked where the cohorts of destruction ran,

Saw darkness visible, and was afraid,

Seeing. There grew like Death a monster shade,

Blind as the coffin, as the covering sod

Damp, as the corpse obscene, the Christian God.

So to the agony dirges of despair

Man cleft the womb, and shook the icy air

With bitter cries for light and life and love.

But these, begotten of the world above.

Withdrew their glory, and the iron world

Rolled on its cruel way, and passion furled

Its pure wings, and abased itself, and bore

Fetters impure, and stopped, and was no more.

But resurrection's ghastly power grew strong,

And Lust was born, adulterous with Wrong,

The Child of Lies ; so man was blinded still,

Garnered the harvest of abortive ill.

For wheat reaped thistles, and for worship wrought

A fouler idol of his meanest thought :

A monster, vengeful, cruel, traitor, slave.

Lord of disease and father of the grave,

• Jephthah, vol. i, p. 76.

THE OLD BOTTLE 163

A treacherous bully, feeble as malign,

Intolerable, inhuman, undivine,

With spite close girded and with hatred shod,

A snarling cur, the Christian's Christless God.

Out! misbegotten monster ! with thy brood,

The obscene offspring of thy pigritude.

Incestuous wedlock with the Pharisees

That hail the Christ a son of thee I Our knees

Bend not before thee, and our earth-bowed brows

Shake off their worship, and reject thy spouse,

The harlot of the world ! For, proud and free.

We stand beyond thy hatred, even we :

We broken in spirit beneath bitter years.

Branded with the burnt-offering of tears.

Spit out upon the lie, and in thy face

Cast back the slimy falsehood ; to your place.

Ye Gadarean swine, too foul to fling

Into the waters that abound and spring !

Back, to your mother filth ! With hope, and youth,

Love, light, and power, and mastery of truth

Armed, we reject you ; the bright scourge we ply.

Your howling spirits stumble to your sty :

The worm that was your lie— our heel its head

Bruises, that bruised us once ; the snake is dead.

So, passionate and pure, the strong chant rolls,
Queen of the mystic unity of souls ;
So from eternity its glory springs
King of the magical brotherhood of kings ;
The absolute crown and kingdom of desire.
Earth's virgin chaplet, molten in the fire,
Sealed in the Sea, betokened by the wind :
" There is one God, the Spirit of Mankind ! " '

Such is Aleister Crowley's magnificent contempt
for the God ideals of man, and the Christ ideals of a
demented mob. That Christianity has been for the

' Mysteries: Lyrical and Dramatic, vol. i, pp. 105, 107. The
sacred pledge of the Rosicrucians was: " Man is God and Son
of God, and there is no other God but Man."

i64 THE STAR IN THE WEST

greater part of fifteen hundred years an immense
power, few can deny; that it has been a power of
good, few will deny, though not a few would like to ;
that it has been a dragonading power of harm few
will assert, and still fewer are aware of; for it has
ever been the craft of the Christian Church to pass off
on her paramours her worn-out old body as that of
untasted virginity.

The Catholic Church, the harlot of the seven hills,
comes in for sparse mercy. In Tannhauser we find
the head of this infallible and august body of swindlers
mocked as a mountebank, and his power as a " barren
staff." ^ In "Ascension Day" the whole Christian
Church as a lie, "abortion and iniquity,"^ whose
soldiers are no ardent warriors in triple steel, but
loathly and disgusting worms,* who only show fight
when cornered and not always then — " speared wild
cats bravely spit."* Neither does Crowley spare that
anachronism, Present-day Christianity, which fondly
imagines it has succeeded in solving the problem of
how to sit on two sides of the fence at one and the
same time, to offer Christ to the simple-minded with
the one hand and drain their pockets with the other.
Amennatep's description of the pathic Ratoum in
"The Fatal Force" may fitly be quoted here as an
apt description of modern-day Christianity :

Her power is gone, and we behold her g-o,
Haggard and weary, through the palace courts
And through the temple, lusting for strange loves
And horrible things, and thirsting for new steam
Of thickening blood upon her altar steps.

Tannhauser, vol. i, p. 260.

Sword of Song, vol. ii, p. 154. ' Ibid. vol. ii, p. 141.

The Argonauts, vol. ii, p. 1 19.

THE OLD BOTTLE 165

Her body wearies of desire, and fails

To satisfy the fury of her spirit ;

The blood feasts sicken her and yield no strength ;

She is made one with hell, and violent force

Slips and is weakness, and extreme desire

Spends supple.^

Inane revivals stir her muddy waters, as rise gusts
of fetid gas from a disturbed cesspool. Maniacs like
Piggott and Evans arise, as also do such religious
Ananiases as Dowie and Torrey ; all battening as
greedy vultures on the mental dead, as they take their
place on the eternal towers of silence — true mutilators
of corpses. Ulric in "The Mother's Tragedy," tells
Cora that " Excess is danger, equally in prayer . . .
as in debauchery. " ° And this the howling mob of
religionists can never grasp. We know of the spots
in the Agapae, and we know to what they referred :

Out ! out ! the ghastly torches of the feast !
Let darkness hide us and the night discover
The shameless mysteries of God grown beast,
The nameless blasphemy, the slimed East —
Sin incarnated with a leprous lover ! '

Whilst these are seeking the " Monstrous desires of
secret things," " others are ranting about atheist death-
bed scenes. For these Crowley also has a word :

" Oh, very well! " I think you say,

" Wait only till your dying day!

See whether then you kiss the rod.

And bow that proud soul down to God ! "

I perfectly admit the fact ;

Quite likely that I so shall act !

1 The Fatal Force, vol. i, p. 143.

^ The Mother's Tragedy, vol. i, p. 163.

' The Temple of the Holy Ghost, vol. i, p. 168.

* Ibid. vol. i, p. 170.

i66 THE STAR IN THE WEST

Here 's why Creation jumps at prayer.

You Christians quote me in a breath

This, that, the other atheist's death ;

How they sought God! Of course! Impair

By just a touch of fever, chill.

My health — where flies my vivid will?

My carcass with quinine is crammed ;

I wish South India were damned ;

I wish I had my mother's nursing.

Find precious little use in cursing.

And slide to leaning on another,

God, or the doctor, or my mother.

But, dare you quote my fevered word

For better than my health averred?

The brainish fancies of a man

Hovering on delirium's brink :

Shall these be classed his utmost span?

All that he can or ought to think?

No ! the strong man and self-reliant

Is the true spiritual giant.

I blame no weaklings, but decline

To take their maunderings for mine. '

We will now end the poet's utter contempt for this
worn-out old creed with the following :

. . . Vex

My soul no more with mistranslations
From Genesis to Revelations,
But leave me with the Flaming Star
Jeheshua (see thou Zohar!)
And thus our formidable Pigeon-
Lamb-and-old-Gentleman religion
Fizzles in smoke, and I am found
Attacking nothing ■ . .'

^ Sword of Song, Ascension Day, vol. ii, pp. i6o, i6i.
' Hid. vol. ii, p. 162.

VI
The Chapter known as

XEbe Cup

In which chapter it is related how the Cup held

the " New Wine," and how that wine is quaffed

greedily by all ; and how to some it tasteth

as bitter as gall, and yet to others is as

Falerniau a hundred and twenty

years old ; for that is the age

of the cellar from out of

which it was ta'en.

Zbc Cup

IN the last line of "The Star and Garter" is con-
centrated the whole of the ethical philosophy of
Aleister Crowley. It reads as follows :

But — had it not been for the Garter, I might never have seen
the Star.

In it we find the sublime maxim, almost universal,
which has been postulated by all the greatest ethical
codes of the world. It is the moral prototype, the
Favashi of the Zoroastrian, the Tree of Knowledge of
Babylonia and Genesis, the Light and Darkness of
Isaiah, the Yakheen and Boaz of Solomon, the Unique
Athanor of the Qabalist, the Balance of Hegel; the
polarity of the worlds, the great centripetal and
centrifugal forces, the harmony of the spheres, the
path of the stars, the life of the universe.

Without Vice there can be no Virtue, without
Virtue there can be no Vice. Without the one, the
other becomes absolutely incomprehensible, and be-
yond our judgement. Hegel held : " that a thing can
only arise through its opposite," and this idea was
also held by the Qabalists. Deity created good and
evil; and both are absolutely necessary to the ex-
istence of each other. Further, the Qabalist does not
even recognize their independence as two opposing
powers, but as one under the one Supreme Deity ;
the external visible matter world of evil and darkness,
and the internal spiritual higher world of Goodness

I70 THE STAR IN THE WEST

and Light, beneficent and malevolent as the ancient
gods of Babylonia. The unique Athanor of philosophic
and moral alchemy was the transmutation of darkness
into light. ' ' Quand V hotnme grandit Dieu s'eleve " ; — it
was but a reconstruction of the same idea as held in
Exodus, xxxiii, Moses was unable to look at God
face to face; it was also the same idea as held by
Charles Darwin — the theory of Evolution. The
growth of the protoplast into man, of evil into good.
Khephra, god of the morning emerging from the black
thunders of night.

Above us flames the Zodiac, the sign of the Balance
lies between Virgo and Scorpio, the eagle is the
emblem of good, the scorpion of evil, the eagle-
winged serpent of Good and Evil ; and it is with this
doctrine of Good and Evil that we shall now deal.

As there was darkness before D'n?^ formed the
light, and as knowledge is the outcome of ignorance,
so is also virtue the outcome of vice.

ERITIS SICUT DEUS, SCIENTES BONUM ET MALUM.

It was Satan, the Lucifer of Milton, the Devil of
Blake, and the Serpent of Genesis, who was the
author of Wisdom.'

And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely
die : For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof,
then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods,
knowing good and evil. — Gen. iii, 4, 5.

It was only by casting off God, and breaking away
from the essentially bestial quality of unreason, that
man paradoxically assumed Godhood. Eliphas Ldvi

1 wna same as n^wn.

THE CUP 171

in one of his unpublished letters wrote, "The riddle
of the sphinx has two answers which are true only in
a third. ' The first is God, the second is man, and the
third Man-God.'" This is but the overman of the
Egoistical philosophy of Nietzsche. Hermes struck a
higher chord when he said: "To create God, is to
accomplish our own creation, to make ourselves inde-
pendent, impassible, and immortal." Blake demon-
strated the at-oneness of Good and Evil very clearly
in " The Marriage of Heaven and Hell." " I tell you
no virtue can exist without breaking these ten com-
mandments," he says, referring to the Decalogue.
Further back in his " Proverbs of Hell," he writes:

You never know what is enough unless you know what is
more than enough.

The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.
The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.
The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
The nakedness of woman is the work of God.
For everything that lives is Holy.

In Samuel Butler's " Erewhon " we find much the
same idea in the following couplet.

He who sins aught sins more than he ought,
But he who sins naught, has much to be taught.

Blake further writes in " The Marriage of Heaven
and Hell":

A man carried a monkey about for a show, and because
he was a little wiser than the monkey, grew vain, and
conceived himself as much wiser than seven men. It is so
with Swedenborg: he shows the folly of churches and
exposes hypocrites, till he imagines that all are religious
and himself the single one on earth that ever broke a net.

Now hear a plain fact : Swedenborg has not written one
new truth.

172 THE STAR IN THE WEST

Now hear another : he has written all the old false-
hoods.

And now hear the reason: He conversed with Angels
who are all religfious, and conversed not with the Devils
who all hate religion . . .

Goethe, in Faust, also depicted this same moral
idea, and most religions have experienced this unity
of Virtue and Vice ; the early Christians applauded it,
and even now in Christian Churches is still sung the
beautiful hymn :

Nearer, my God, to thee,

Nearer to thee,
E'en though it be a cross

That raiseth me !
Still all my song shall be

Nearer, my God, to thee.

Nearer to thee.

To raise oneself through the vicious and the virtuous,
to reside, as Adonis did, six months with Proserpine,
and six with Venus, to be as day and night, winter
and summer, is no easy path to tread; and if it be
necessary for the initiate to gaze on the back parts of
Jahveh, it is, however, most certainly not necessary
for him to kiss the hind quarters of the goat of
Mendes, or to revel in the secret orgies of the
Agapae ; for the tempting of man is but the temper-
ing of the metal. '

The flower which springs from the dunghill assimi-
lates into itself particles of matter, transforming them
into the ruby of the poppy and the sapphire of the
cornflower ; so with us, it is synthetically that we rise,
and not analytically. Blake grasped this idea and so
did Joseph de Maistre. The Arcanum of Solomon is

Yet the virtue of one man may be the vice of another.

THE CUP 173

represented by the two pillars of the temple, Yakheen
and Boaz, the two forces, the white and the black;
separate and contrary, yet in their polarity they are
viniform, equilibrating their unity. The philosopher's
stone, as Hermes declared, consisted in separating the
ethereal from that which was gross.

Thou shalt separate the earth from the fire, the ethereal
from the gross, gently, but with great industry.

It ascends from earth to heaven, and again it comes
down from heaven to earth, and it is invested with the
potency of superior and inferior things.

Thou wilt possess by this means the glory of the whole
world, and all darkness will depart from thee.

It is the strong power of every power, for it will over-
come all things subtle and penetrate all things solid.

It is thus that the world was created.^

Tannhauser also separated the higher from the
lower self, the good from the evil. Christ also at-
tempted the same course, not living alone for either
good or bad, but for the whole, as JeldMdeen sang,
"I am the song and singer," etc., the surest centre
of immortality lying in the whole, and not in the part.
The Qabalist compared the wicked with the excrement
of the great human body, a necessary vivific secretion,
and not a poison to the living organism. Waite tells
us : " These excretions also serve as a manure to the
earth, which brings forth fruits to nourish the body;
thus death reverts always to life, and evil itself serves
for the renewal and nourishment of good." " The most
important of all the arcana of the Magnum opus was
the transformation of darkness into light. Again,
we have the white and black triangles, the unique
Athanor of moral alchemy, the transmutation of

' Hermes. ^ The Mysteries of Magic, p. 150.

174 THE STAR IN THE WEST

darkness into light. ' ' The stone becomes a plant,
the plant an animal, the animal a man, and man
greatens into Deity." '

Nothing is absolutely evil, nothing is accursed for ever,
not even the archangel of evil, for a time will come when
his name and angelic nature will be restored to him.^

Thus we rise through the microprosopus of good
and evil, to the great ethical macroprosopus which is
equilibrated. Many are the tracks and by-paths of
life which lead over the mountains, the swamps, the
forests of existence to that great road, the road of the
Soul.

From the supernal flights of Idealism, we now find
Crowley in the most infernal depths of realism striving
through a sea of blood towards that flaming pentacle
which flares on the dim horizon of Hope. All is night,
yet all is expectation ; herculean is the task, yet the
heart is that of a Titan. Blake saw that "Prisons
are built with stones of Law ; brothels with bricks of
Religion, " and so does Crowley. Both in their sagacity
perceive that the one great crime is that of exclusive-
ness. The Christian failing to see this, worshipped
the masculine power of wisdom and neglected the
feminine power of Intelligence, his God was as the
God of most religions a veritable He-God, therein lay
his fault ; the only philosophy perhaps that grasped
the truth was that of the Qabala. The microprosopus
was neither masculine nor feminine, but androgynous ;
and it was left for William Postel to utter one of the
greatest world truths when he said, " The Word has

' The Mysteries of Magic, p. 30.
^ La Kabbale, Frank, p. 217.

THE CUP 175

indeed become man, but not until the Word has be-
come woman will the world be saved." It is this that
Crowley sets vividly out before us in his following
ethical philosophy.

" To behold sin in its naked Deformity, is the most
certain method to oblige us to love Virtue," such is
to be read in the prefatory note of a curious little
volume to be found in the British Museum library
under the attractive title of ' ' The prostitution of
Quality or Adultery a-la-mode." It was through the
Garter that in the end the Star was seen, in other
words it was through the intimate knowledge of the
lewd, bad and vicious, that the tender weeping heart
was discovered ; the rough matrix contained a gem of
surpassing beauty, the horny shell a pearl of perfect
loveliness. Charicles had to tread the thorny path
before he won his Archais, and so must we, before
we can win knowledge, weep many bitter tears. The
incessant search after Truth carries us through desert
lands of misery, and oases of temptation, as is only
too vividly illustrated in Tannhauser.

Aphrodite before she could overcome the wiles of
Jove had to seek aid from Priapus ; ' thus so have we
all to do, we must eat of the " Tree of Knowledge of
Good and Evil " before we can pluck the fruit of the
"Tree of Life."

The mediaeval spiritualism of "Paracelsus" is
curiously modernized, if we may use so crude a word,
in the mystical poem "Aceldama." The strife in the
former from the kingdom to the crown, in the latter
seems to be that of Vice towards Virtue, and though
quite one of Crowley's earlier poems, it is, however,

' The Tale of Archais, vol. i, p. 18.

176 THE STAR IN THE WEST

one of his most interesting and attractive, and this is
how I interpret it.

A soul standing in the lupanar of life, aspiring to
grasp the mystic riddle from the chilly lips of the
eternal sphinx, salutes us, as we open this frail little
volume. Our bodies are not burst asunder as was that
of Judas, but our souls are reft and rent, and in the
end know not God from Satan, or which of these
twain have won. "All the dream is wrought a spider-
tapestry " yet the soul stands on the blood-red field of
Aceldama :

II.

. . . whose red banners beat
Their radiant fire
Into my shrivelled head, to wither Love's desire?^

The picture becomes grander still, the child of life
becomes old in thought:

III.

I was a child long years ago, it seems,
Or months it may be — I am still a child !
They pictured me the stars as wheeling wild
In a huge bowl of water ; but my dreams
Built it of Titan oak, its sides were piled
Of fearful wood
Hewn from God's forests, paid with sweat and tears and
blood.

Yet to what does this infinite yearning lead? The
soul looks "out to the beyond," and from the shape-
less and unstayed there bursts the cry of " Nothing,"
" But evermore came out by the same door wherein I
went."" In verse vi we find the mysticism of Bera-
shith "Nothing was everything"; and in verse vii,
the perfection of life in death "Absorbed my life in

> Aceldama, vol. i, p. 2. ^ Omar Khayydm,

THE CUP 177

His, dispersed me, gave me death." This is pure
Buddhism.

In death is found release, freedom from desire,
which fools alone reject. In the spiritual contemplation
of life the slags of existence fall to the bottom of the
burning furnace of the human soul ; the power of em-
pire and glory is shattered, "The golden image with
the feet of clay," and the marred vessels of the (All)-
mighty potter are cast outside, from the wheel of Fate
— why contemplate what is so unprofitable and use-
less?

Yet in this mysticism which is more intrinsically of
the East, we find an intricate web of Egotism tangled
with the utilitarianism of the West ; for it seems on
reading further that it is not in mere abstraction of
the real, but rather in the total absorption of the real,
that the Nirvana of bliss is to be arrived at. It is
terrible sailing this, Scylla lies to our left, Charybdis
to our right, the blood-fiecked foam of life is dashed
on our lips, it is acrid and intoxicating.

XII.
No prostitution may be shunned by him
Who would achieve this Heaven. No satyr-songf,
No maniac dance shall ply so fast a thong
Of lust's imagining^ perversely dim
That no man's spirit may keep pace, so strong
Its pangf must pierce ;
Nor all the pains of hell may be one tithe as fierce.

XIII.
All degradation, all sheer infamy,

Thou shalt endure. Thy head beneath the mire
And dung of worthless women shall desire
As in some hateful dream, at last to lie ;
Women must trample thee till thou respire
That deadliest fume ;
The vilest worms must crawl, the loathliest vampires gloom.
N

178 THE STAR IN THE WEST

Dividuality the curse of existence must vanish, and
it can only vanish through the melting of the discord-
ant ego into the harmonious Whole. If we set our-
selves aside on a pillar of purity, we are but dualizing
existence, the lees of the wjne must be quaifed in the
same cup as the wine itself, there is no other choice :

XIV.
Thou must breathe in all poisons ; for thy meat,
Poison ; for drink, still poison ; for thy kiss,
A serpent's lips ! . . .

Then the verse continues, and we see if we may so ex-
press it, the great nuptials with the Lords of Lust :

An agony is this
That sweats out venom j thy clenched hands, thy feet
Ooze blood, thine eyes weep blood ; thine anguish is
More keen than death.
At last — there is no deeper vault of hell beneath !

Then comes the great reward. We have travelled
knee deep through the mire of life, yet if our souls be
spotless our abasement, "... bringeth back the
sheaves "

XV.

Of golden corn of exaltation.

With strange intoxications mad and manifold.

It is this curious phase, yearning towards Perfection,
which forms the great stumbling-block to all progress in
the life of a soul. Priestcraft has drawn a definite line
between Vice and Virtue ; it has hedged itself round
with chastity, veracity, honesty, and modesty, and set
itself apart to wage an incessant war on vice, lechery,
mendacity, immodesty, etc., etc. And what has been
the result of this duality? The very fort of virtuous
self-suflBciency, the very citadel of chaste-exclusive-

THE CUP 179

ness has become fetid with the horrors of besiegement,
the moats are filled with the putrid carcasses of an
unjust war ; fever reigns, vice laughs, the inhabitants
starve, sucking the putrid pus from the wounds of
the dead, and devouring rats and other vermin. Out-
side in the Camp of Vice, plague reigns and pestilence
rules ; yet if the summed evils of Virtue and Vice were
cast into the balance of Truth, who dare say which
would outweigh the other? Everyone knows the
degradation as well as the ennoblements of war ; the .
former ever as some leprous brach licking at her heels ;
the latter a halo of sainthood to be cast o'er the skull
of the time-cleansed skeleton, which was once a spongy
mass of wriggling larvae. During his life the thief
stole, he lied, and he cheated ; pursued, he was
caught, judged, and nailed to a cross, and in death
alone was he promised the subconscious longing of
his life — Paradise.

This duality of Virtue and Vice has rent the world,
as with a sword, and her garment has been torn
asunder. Some say " this is mine! " others " that is
mine!" and so the quarrel rages. Yet will they not
unite? for the blending of Virtue and Vice means the
loss of some supposed comfort, and comfort is the
God of man's heart, the Vampire which sucks its life
from his shrivelling soul.

In laughter alone we shall never solve the riddle of
life, only in the mingling of our smiles with our sobs
shall we realize the kiss of God on our brow. Yet the
dangers are terrible. How many of us can listen to
the voice of Circe without becoming swine? and in
the full melancholy of so vast a contemplation, the
poet sings :

i8o THE STAR IN THE WEST

XVIII.
I dare not to the greater sins aspire ;

I migflit — so gross am I — take pleasure in
These filthy holocausts, that burn to sin
A damned incense in the hellish fire

Of human lust — earth's joys no heaven may win;
Pain holds the prize
In blood-stained hands ; Love laughs, with anguish in His eyes.

Also he sees how dangerous it is to sip from the cup
of "little common sins." Sins nurtured by trust in
man's forgiveness ; then struck with the horror of the
still small voice, he bids God break his unrepentant
will, and let the kiss of life :

XXI.

Melt on my lips to flame, fling back the gates of Dis !

This is the true conquest of life, the salvation of a
soul wandering through the mazy depths of existence.
At length filled with the experience of worldly things
seeking the Sublime, he finds it. The kingdom of Dis,
the terrors of Death are vanquished, "and, like this in-
substantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind."

Yet how difficult is all this without the guidance of
a master hand, the hand which supports but does not
hold, directing but never compelling.

Then the Isis of Aceldama is unveiled, and the
secret is caught from the age-worn lips of the Sphinx.
On the crimson field of the Exoteric the body of ex-
clusive Esoterism lies dead, the soul has sloughed the
skin of caste, has riven the fetters of law, has smitten
the last head from the hydra of religion ; and rises as
an eaglerwinged serpent, sublime, neither good nor
evil, pristine, Adamic, immaculate:

THE CUP i8i

XXIV.

An ecstasy to which no life responds,
Is the enormous secret I have learned :
When self-denial's furnace-flame has burned

Througfh love, and all the agonizing bonds
That hold the soul within its shell are turned
To water weak ;

Then may desires obtain the cypress crown they seek.

It is only when we lose the cherished present, that
it looms up throug-h the mist of time as a glorious
past ; and it is only when we have lost the body of
corruption, that its soul rises sublime purifying all;
our personality purified by death the great Time Soul
lies cradled in our own as the four lips of two lovers
are in their bridal kiss. Alone by trampling life's
grapes do we gain the vintage of the Soul, the
Medean draught of rejuvenescence.

The whole of this wonderful philosophy the poet
sums up in the following two verses of extraordinary
and extravagant power :

XXVIII.
Aubrey attained in sleep when he dreamt this
Wonderful dream of women, tender child
And harlot, naked all, in thousands piled
On one hot writhing heap, his shameful kiss
To shudder through them, with lithe limbs defiled
To wade, to dip
Down through the mass, caressed by every purple lip.

XXIX.
Choked with their reek and fume and bitter sweat
His body perishes; his life is drained;
The last sweet drop of nectar has not stained
Another life ; his lips and limbs are wet
With death-dews ! Ha ! The painter has attaine
As high a meed
As his who first begot sweet music on a reed.

i82 THE STAR IN THE WEST

Love alone is immortal, love for the good, love for
the bad. Redolent with divinity, it floats onward
through life, through heaven, through hell, till the
flaming forms of Paolo and Francesca rise before us,
an everlasting answer to the eternal word of Love.

Nay? kiss in double death-pang, if you dare!
Or one day I will strangle you within
My heavy hair ! ^

Slowly, and solely through temptation can man be
purified. Burns, who was possessed with the happiest
knack of striking the nail full on the head, driving it
home at one blow, describes this well in his ' ' Address
to the Unco Gude " :

What 's done we partly may compute
But kenna what 's resisted.

It is this resistaVice alone which sanctifies man, body
and soul. There is sparse morality in the well-fed,
the well-housed, the well-dressed, their existence is
indolent, comfortable, affluent; but in the ill-fed, the
houseless, the unclothed, there may be much. There
is nothing sublime in an oily gourmet passing a baker's
shop without wishing to steal a loaf; but in a hungry
child whose' hollow bowels growl for food the oppor-
tunity of theft if resisted is noble. The sleek, smiling
society hostess has no need to frequent the streets for
gain, but who dare say that the poor hounded outcast
has not? He that is without sin among you, let

HIM first cast a STONE AT HER.

Even the Scribes and Pharisees, who were thus
rebuked, departed in silence, convicted by their own
conscience ; but not so our modern Christian canaille,
from the Pope and the Archbishop and the Patriarch

^ Aceldama, vol. i, p. 6

THE CUP 183

downwards. O, Christians! you daily crucify your
Saviour, hourly you drive the rusty nails through His
outstretched hands, O " maudite race!" "Whose

GOD IS THEIR BELLY, WHOSE GLORY IS IN THEIR SHAME,
WHO MIND EARTHLY THINGS."

Temptation is the Armourer -who tries the blade, and
Resistance the quality of the steel. How many of the
well-fed will bear the test of old Andrea? How many
would prove themselves a worthy blade to Ferrara?

Sadness stares around us with hollow tear-drowned
eyes, and the days of our joys are wet with the weep-
ing of the night of sorrow. On, on we plod, through
life's by-ways and alleys, through mud and slime,
onward we must go if we are ever to win the gates of
Wisdom and Understanding and attain the Kingdom
of the Holy Crown. "Self" we must slay, it is the
great sin of life :' "The scorpion kisses, and the stings
of sin, cling hard within. " '^ The small still voice calls to
us, yet we must overcome it, in its conquest alone lies
our salvation. "Truth" is our St. George, whose
sword is as keen as his of "The Nameless Quest,"
and " Self" the dragon which we must slay:

Central, supreme, most formidable, Night

Gathered its garments, drew itself apart ;
Gaunt limbs appear athwart the coprolite.
Veil the deep agony, display the heart ;

Even as a gloomy sea.

Wherein dead fishes be,
Poisonous things, nameless ; the eightfold Fear,

Misshapen crab and worm,

The intolerable sperm,
Lewd dragons, slime-built. Stagnant, the foul mere

Crawled, moved, gave tongue,

' Songs of the Spirit, vol. i, p. 50.
^ Ibid. vol. i, p. 54.

i84 THE STAR IN THE WEST

The essential soul of dung
That lived and stung;
That spoke : no word that living head may hear !

Last, a dark woman pressed
The world unto her breast,
Soothed and caressed -- ': ' '

With evil words and kisses of the mouth of Sin.^

On we must press, undaunted, against all odds and
numbers, as in the spiritual journey towards the
Supreme of " The Ultimate Voyage," struggling with
the cold wet horrors of life :

. . . with my sword
Trenchant, that tore their scaly essences —
Like Lucian's sailor writhing in the clutch
Of those witch-vines — I slashed about like light,
And noises horrible of death devoured
That hateful suction of their clinging arms
And wash of slippery bellies. . . .^

Life is a boiling cauldron of purposes, actions, and
desires. At one moment all pessimistic with the ' ' toad-
spotted dew "^ of Reality, at the next all full-hearted
optimism, "Yet I believe what e'er we do is best for
me and best for you";* then as stoical as Marcus,
" I conquer, and most silently await the end.""

All phases of thought are crowded on our minds as
we read through these slight volumes. And what is
the goal of this "Ultimate Voyage?" A deep and
tearless sadness, a growing wonder of how such
luxury, such wealth, such satiety can exist cheek by

1 The Temple of the Holy Ghost, vol. i, p 198.
^ Mysteries: Lyrical and Dramatic, vol. i, p. 97.
' The Temple of the Holy Ghost, vol. i, p. 178.
■• The Sword of Song, vol. ii, p. 155.
' Songs of the Spirit, vol. i, p. 52.

THE CUP 185

jowl with such squalor, such poverty, such want. Is
there a God ? Could there be a God ? A power of Light
compatible with such dismal darkness. Is there a
life eternal? The grim horror of such a possibility
grips us by the throat. Is there an eternal Death ? Ah !
Saviour, deliver us from the misery of our lot ; lead
us to the realms of eternal Rest, where rich and poor,
good and bad, are made one, lost in the depths of the
Lethean sea.

And what can all this lead us to, this progress
through misery? To the great archetype the Arahat-
ship of Buddha. It was by gazing on the sunken eyes
of a corpse, so the legend runs, that Gautama forsook
pleasure for a life of pity. Life is feodal to Death, and
our ultimate sleep is greater than our first awakening.
The womb was dark ; from out it sprang the thought-
less ; the tomb is darker still ; into it creeps the
thoughtful. The dead are our gods, soon we shall
strike our tent for the last time and join the great
caravanserai of the departed :

Wend now thy way with brow serene, fear not thy humble tale

to tell:—
The whispers of the Desert-wind ; the tinkling' of the camel's

beU.i

This beauty of Death as the releaser from the
temptations of life, is finely drawn by the subtle pen
of Aleister Crowley. Death is no longer the grub-
slimed skull, about whose sticky lips buzz the blue
blow-flies of decay ; but rather a divine goddess, whose
arms are ever about us, and whose kiss is the kiss
of a mother closing the eyes of her child in gentle
sleep :

' The Kastdah. R. Burton.

i86 THE STAR IN THE WEST

I died the moment when you tore away
The bleeding veil of my virginity.

The pain was sudden — and the joy was long.
Persists that triumph, keenly, utterly !
Write, then, in thy mysterious book of song :
" Death chisels marble where life moulded clay." '

And again :

Dim winds shall whisper echoes of

Our slow ecstatic breath.
Telling all worlds how sweet is love,

How beautiful is De^th.^

Thus in this cup which Aleister Crowley offers us,
we find that to sip the honey of Virtue is to quaff the
wormwood of Vice ; they are one, and there must be
no comparison. Outside our minds exists neither one
nor the other, alone there is Power, Eastwards it verges
towards Virtue, Westwards towards Vice — Heaven
and Hell — yet in neither is there vitality, for absolutes
are without change. Our lives are vital because of the
mingling of many dregs ; and as in the death of these
we can alone check vitality or change, so also in that
greater Death can we alone solve the mystery of pure
being. Virtue and Vice they are one, being formless
and eternal without time or number ; for whilst we
live death is not, and the purities of state cannot be.
We live in a land of mingled cloud and flame, on the
marge of the kingdoms of the Positive and the Trans-
cendent, all is as a seething cauldron of finalities ;
ever boiling up to vanish in the inane. Optimism and
Pessimism, the former proffering to us the golden
chalice filled with the vanities of life, the latter a
leaden cup replete with the excretum of existence.

' The Temple of the Holy Ghost, vol. i, p. 182.
* The Argonauts, iv, vol. ii, p. no.

THE CUP 187

"Away, away, out of my sunlight," waved Diogenes;
he saw before him a man, only a man full of brains
and bowels. The maidens of Athens laughed at him,
wizened misogynist and dreary sage, yet even the
most beautiful of these monthly would spill her crim-
son libation to the moon. "Yea! truly, away, away,
out of my sight, O shadow of a king ; but last night
wert thou not fingering the delicate chalice of Cam-
paspe, and a few hours hence will not thy drowsy hand
crimson the white womb of thy Mother Earth with
the red lees of the grape of Bacchus, so full of the
poppies of sleep, and the wormwood of sorrow."

From the silver goblet of laughter, that leaden cup
of weeping, have the nations drunk the dregs of many
lives: for the woman arrayed in purple and scarlet,
and decked with pearls and precious stones, hath made
them drunk on the golden cup of her abominations,
on the wine of her fornications, on the filthy philtres
of her whoredoms ; and they have become truculent,
and boisterous, and mad; cloaking the silken naked-
ness of the day with their woollen shroud of darkness,
and seeking in the depths of night the mysteries of
everlasting light.

O Dweller in the Land of Uz, thou also shalt
be made drunken, but thy cup shall be hewn from
the sapphire of the heavens, and thy wine shall be
crushed from the clusters of innumerable stars ; and
thou shalt make thyself naked, and thy white limbs
shall be splashed with the purple foam of immortality.
Thou shalt tear the jewelled tassels from the purse of
thy spendthrift Fancy, and shalt scatter to the winds
the gold and silver coins of thy thrifty Imagination ;
and the wine of thy Folly shalt thou shower midst
the braided locks of laughing comets, and the glitter-

i88 THE STAR IN THE WEST

ing cup of thine Illusions shalt thou hurl beyond the
confines of Space over the very rim of Time.

Thou O seeker after Wisdom, and Virtue, and
multiscient Truth, thou O wanderer in the groves of
Eleusis, thou, even thou shalt drink of the wine of
lacchus, and thy cup shall be as a triple flame set
with sapphire, and beryl, and amethyst ; for it is the
cup of Adepts, and of Heroes, and of Gods. Then all
the absinthial bitterness of thine heart shall vanish
midst the chaunting of souls lost in the ocean of
understanding for ever and everlasting.

From the filthy distillations of thy life, and the golden
traffic of its quintessential lusts; from the fantastic
dews of thy death, and all the gibbous glitter of its
mirific mirror, shalt thou be purified : and thy cup
shall be as the cusps of the horned moon, and thy
wine as the blood of the spheres trodden by the angels
of God, singing, singing, singing, throughout all
Eternity.

Thy joy shall be as the kiss of new-born suns, and
thy bliss as a flaming cloud of bridal stars. Thou
shalt sit on the throne of Time in the centre 'twixt the
four corners of the Universe ; and in thy left hand
shalt thou hold the Balances of Being, in which thou
shalt weigh the suns, and moons, and all the hosts of
heaven; and thy foot-stool shall be the Abyss, and
thy sceptre a sword of flaming fire, thy crown the
Zodiac set with the flashing Stone of the Wise. Robed
in glory, and wisdom, and understanding, a light of
loveliness, thou, God-voiced with thunder and light-
ning, shalt breathe forth words of fire to flame for-
ever through the empyrean of heaven and to resound
without ceasing beyond the nadir of hell. Thou sha't
plunge into the mystery of all things and become as a

THE CUP 189

Sun unto thyself, and with thine own beams shalt
thou paint the hueless ocean of thy Godhead. Thou
shalt see things as they are; and all shall dissolve
around thee, and thou around all, till unity itself
become but nothingness in the unutterable bliss of a
boundless rapture.

O wine of lacchus, O wine, wine, wine.

VII

The Chapter known as

Ube IRew Mine

In which chapter it is related : how the " New Wine "
which was drawn from the Tavern known as the
"Well of Life " burst the " Old Bottle " ; and yet
was not spilt. And wherein it is shown how it
intoxicated the multitudes to dreams in
the which they perceive many things
that are not; and how it openeth
the eye of the wise to the
vision of the One Won-
der which alone is.

^be mew mine'

ALL philosophies when ultimately reduced to their
simplest terms fall either under the subjective
or objective systems of thought." The former is

' Argument : This chapter attempts to show how all philo-
sophies may be equated in corresponding' terms of each other;
and how the philosophic principles of Berkeley and Hume,
combined, form what may be known as the philosophical theme
of Crowleyanity, in which it is demonstrated how all systems
are inwardly mystically identical, and outwardly sceptically
diverse. Further, how by the study of Berkeley, Hume, and
Kant, taken unitedly or separately, the conclusion which is
arrived at is, that the Reason alone is inadequate to solve the
Great Problem; for ultimately all systems based on a Rational
foundation arrive at an inscrutable mystery — "God," "A
Something," "An k priori," beyond which they cannot pene-
trate. Where Agnosticism and Scientific Buddhism end, Crow-
leyanity begins. By Qabalistically tackling the question, it
proposes a Future to all Rational Philosophies, thereby becom-
ing a mystical theurgy, whereby the difficulties set in motion
by the conceptions of " Infinite " and " Eternal " are overcome
by the annihilation of Time and Space, and the reduction of all
rational terms to an absolute inertia in zero. From here
Crowleyanity becoming purely mystical becomes symbolic,
leading those who follow into the Kingdom of the Adepts; and
finally showing how the keynote of all mystical systems of
either East or West, is to be found in Ecstasy ; and how the
former, arriving at this sublime state by purely mechanical
methods, are not so suitable to those Western nations as their
own poetic mysticism, as found in the divine works of the
Christian Fathers, the Alchymistic Philosophers, and the Mys-
tical Poets of Ancient and Modern times.

^ There is an old saying, " All men are born either Platonists
or Aristotelians.

194 THE STAR IN THE WEST

ontologic, the latter empiric : the first descends from
fiction, whilst the second rises from fact; both, para-
doxical as it may seem, are at one and the same time
contradictory and identical, merging into a perfect
unity, not in the realms of a spiritual or material
monism, but in those of a Hylo-Idealistic philosophy,
which is Agnostic, and from thence into a Self-Illum-
inism which baffles definition.

For many centuries now, European thought has
been labouring under the damnosa hereditas of fore-
gone conclusions. And as religion in the attempt to
anthropomorphise power, through the medium of
dialectic symbols, lost all footing and plunged head-
long into the pandemoniac majesty of Deity, so philo-
sophy, losing all grip of reality by clutching the
illusive realism of its own creative faculties, was it-
self whirled into that furnace of hereditary prejudice,
and educational bias, from out of which it has flowed
a mass of molten and subservient acquiescence. Lost
in the axiomatic whirlpools of egotistical conceit, it
has been cast up once again on the shores of unknow-
able despair, a veritable mass of philosophic pig-iron,
of no further use than that of acting as ballast to the
good ship which is to carry us across the turbid ocean
of raging Eclectics.

Crowley is more than a new-born Dionysus, he is
more than a Blake, a Rabelais or a Heine; for he
stands before us as some priest of Apollo, hovering
'twixt the misty blue of the heavens, and the more
certain purple of the vast waters of the deep. Before
the name of That which is beyond life and death,
beyond matter and energy, beyond the human and
the mortal ; he stands, holding before us as a stan-
dard, the homologue of the Labarum of old, " /«

THE NEW WINE 195

hoc signo vinces . . . Non iimendum est Veritate
dii.ce."

In order to cut a long story short, it may be as-
sumed that so-called modern philosophy finds its
founder in the French philosopher Descartes; for it
was he who started to unravel the Penelope web of
tangled philosophic thought, which had lain sleeping
for a thousand years or more upon the sterile shelf of
Christian impotence.

His theories of " Innate ideas " raised the anger of
Locke, the disciple of Aristotle and Bacon. Revolting
from the cogito ergo sum of Descartes, he compared
the mind to a tabula rasa, on which he in his turn
wrote an equal absurdity in the words : nihil est in
intellectu quod non antea fuerit in sensu. Leibnitz in
his day, perceiving the weakness in this axiom, ex-
tended its phraseology, but in no way its meaning,
by adding Excipi nisi ipse intellectus. This weakness
in Locke's system became only too apparent to his
followers ; and Berkeley, as well as Hume, and later
still Kant himself, travelling by slightly different
roads, ultimately arrived at the same destination :
"we cannot go beyond experience."

In the first half of the last century Kant's immedi-
ate successors, such as Fichte, Schelling and Hegel,
swinging round this central point of attraction, though
viewing it from different positions, ultimately, like
moths round a candle, fell spluttering into the socket,
burnt by that same flame they were attempting ±0
explain away. Nevertheless, though at first their
Narcissus-like self-worship may seem to have been
productive of little good, at least, however, it has
brought to blossom one irrefragable and irrefutable
fact, and that is : that in some apparently unknown

196 THE STAR IN THE WEST

plane, sensation can be other than subjective, i.e., in
the subject, in other words, that subjective creation can
outstep its own creator and vice versa. For there is a

sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling- is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
AH thinking things,; all objects of all thoughts.
And rolls through all things. '

To the uninitiated this matter must for the present
remain dark, and though at first the neophyte may
think that the following solution, which I trust I shall
be able in some little way to explain, is but one on a
similar footing to that as set forward by those super-
naturalists who dogmatize concerning credo quia ab-
surduvt, I must bid him now at the very outset re-
member, that "except he become as a little child, he
can in no way enter into the kingdom of heaven " ;
and further, becoming as a little child it must be re-
membered that it is as child-like to grasp at that which
alone can be solved " in the alembic of the heart,
and through the athanor of affliction," as it is for a
child to grasp a loaded gun, wotting not of its subtle
machinery. For a man becoming as a child, may,
like that child which he has become, play with that
loaded weapon, nurse that loaded weapon, go to bed
with that loaded weapon, expecting nothing of so in-
nocent a toy; and then one day as he presses his
fetish fondly to his heart, there is a deafening crash ;
and that child who was once a man, flashes up through
the golden gates of Paradise, or is hurled headlong

' Wordsworth.

THE NEW WINE 197

down to Hell. He may become spontaneously, in the
twinkling of an eye, a St. Francis preaching' to his
little sisters the birds, or Egg-Nogg who persists in a
state of abnormal flatulency, because he considers
himself identical with a bottle of ginger-beer.

The state of illumination above mentioned is by no
means an easy one to attain to, and the study of
philosophy alone helps us, if we follow it under the
shaded light of a critical scepticism ; for as a chemist
reduces his compounds to their component parts, and
then to their elementary conditions ; so must we dissect
all philosophic arguments which rise up antagonistic
to our true selves — that is in harmony with our false
selves — seducing our sense to pluck the fruit which is
pleasant to the eye, or inducing our understanding in
despair, to cast itself down from the pinnacle of the
temple into that abyss below, which is the world. Then
in the end we shall find all these philosophies are but
types of the One, that all things are a unity, that no con-
tradiction can or does exist, and that there is a universal
harmony ; then, as that terrific night engulfs all and
envelops us, O children of the Day ! Let us rise up with
the whole dawn of our understanding, encircle and an-
nihilate this dismal unity, and conglobe all into a per-
fect nothingness, an ineifable bliss — attainment is ours.

It matters little whether we

With Fichte and the Brahmins preach

That Egfo-Atraan sole must be ;

With Schelling and the Buddha own

Non-Ego-Skandhas are alone ;

With Hegel and — the Christian? teach

That which completes, includes, absorbs

Both mighty unrevolving orbs

In one informing masterless

Master-idea of consciousness —

igS THE STAR IN THE WEST

All differences as these indeed

Are chess play, conjuring. " Proceed ! "

Nay ! I'll go back. The exposition

Above, has points. But simple fission

Has reproduced a different bliss.

At last a heterogenesis ! '

Many roads lead to Philosophyand branch forth from
it, as Crowley above shows, and in a short essay like
this we intend but to travel through the labyrinthine
mysteries of all by the silken clue of one, handed us
by Aleister Crowley. And as there are many by-ways,
corridors, and blind alleys in this great labyrinth of
Parnassus, so in this clue, which has been given us,
we shall find many twisted threads, yet all of one fibre,
which will lead us, the weary wanderers in the mys-
teries, to that certain and blissful kingdom which shall
be our beginning.

Kant has said, the business of all philosophy is to
answer the question "What can I know?" Huxley,
perhaps the astutest philosopher since the days of
the magus of Konigsberg, observes that it is impos-
sible to answer the question "What can I know?"
unless in the first place there is a clear understanding
of what is meant by knowledge, and in order to an-
swer this question, "we must have recourse to that
investigation of mental phenomena, the results of
which are embodied in the science of psychology.""
But the true crux of all philosophic arguments lies, as
we hope shortly to show, in a still deeper problem
than this, namely: "What is the 'I' which causes
us to know?" For surely it is but common-sense to
first inquire of the engineer how the engine is worked,

' Pentecost, vol. ii, p. 170.

' Huxley's Essay on Hume, p. 59.

THE NEW WINE 199

instead of blundering in attempts to do so for our-
selves, without knowledge, or even the necessary in-
struction as to the subtle adjustment of the different
parts. And it is on account of the want of this " I "
that all science resting on the inquiry ' ' What do I
know? " without the " I " being analytically disclosed,
must, and does, rest upon knowledge purely accidental
or hypothetical.

It is quite as possible for hypothetical arguments
to be rightly and wrongly applied, as it is for mechan-
ical tools. A pick-axe is a most useful implement in
levelling a road, and equally a most useless one in
mending a watch ; so also with hypothetical argu-
ments, a subtle and illuminated mystic will discard
such mean scaffolding, or at least attain such a per-
fection in the art of constructing his temple of the
Holy Ghost as in time to be able to do without such
mental timber. Such scaffold poles are those which
support and buttress up the frail edifice of science on
the mud of ignorance, in which it and its superstruc-
ture will eventually be engulfed ; for its whole founda-
tion reposes upon the unequilibrated illusions of the
mind, which so long as their influences remain un-
balanced, stand as impediments in the way of the
inward development of the human race.' And as the
gigantic edifice of the Christian Church was the child
of the neuropathic mystagogues of the dark ages of
religion, so now the colossal fabric of Scientific

' Science here as a. method is not attacked. For as such,
scientific investigations have always triumphed over mystical
aspirations, which to say the least, have been chaotic in the
extreme. Crowley is never tired of urging a scientific study of
the conditions of illumination as the one hope of mastering the
subject.

200 THE STAR IN THE WEST

Utilitarianism, offspring of a distorted and epileptic
steam-mania, has bemerded us with its panting slime,
and wound us tight in the arachnoid meshes of its
kakodemoniacal web, until we stand before ourselves,
no longer homo sapiens, but alone, naked and un-
adorned, a cinder-sprinkled, soot-besmeared, spider-
legged, homo ridiculissimus!

Periodically as the adepts soar above vulgar ap-
preciation, and when vulgar understanding has, swine-
like, trodden their pearls of wisdom back into the mud
of its own sty, a great wave of materialism sweeps over
the face of the globe. This system of thought, built
on the illusive phantasmagoria of the mind, found in
the West a master-mind to mould it into shape, in the
personality of Democritus of Abdera ; and from the day
when that sage materialized the creations of his brain
to that of Biichner and the present-day mud-larks, it
has formed the stumbling-block to nearly every great
thinker, and the veritable pus puriens of the common
mind. However, out of the slough grew, as must
always happen, a subtle plant; and in the form of
Newton, whose scientific demonstration of auto-kinetic-
ism, many ages previously adumbrated by Empedo-
cles and Democritus, gave the death-blow to that
Empiricism, which may be typified in Locke's asser-
tion that " motion and figure are really in the manna,"
to which Berkeley attributed a purely mental exist-
ence; for he asserts again and again that the only
substantial existence is the hypothetical substratum
of mind, i.e., spirit.^ And this, as Huxley himself

' All these philosophers end in the same quandary as the old
gentleman who with only one tooth in his mouth tried to spike
a pickled onion.

THE NEW WINE 201

states, if pushed to its logical extreme, passes into
pantheism pure and simple ; and thus through object-
ing to Locke's primary qualities as things in them-
selves, Berkeley returns, through the objection, back
to the causa sui, or better, ratio sui of Spinoza, the
spiritual twin of Locke.

I have taken some little trouble to arrive at this one
isolated conclusion, that the Realism of the scholastic
philosophers, the materialism of the classical and
modern sages, and also, if we choose to extend our
scheme, Nominalism, Conceptualism, Theism, Positiv-
ism, Spiritualism (Malebranche), Agnosticism (Spen-
cer), all and one, with all the other isms, may, with
the slightest trouble in the world, be equated into cor-
responding terms of Berkeleyan Idealism. And why?
Because each individual master, each separate school,
like the astronomer in the fable, whilst gazing at his
own particular star, fell into the open ditch which
yawned unperceived at his feet. And Berkeley : is he
the Ultima Thule, the stone of the wise? By no means,
only I, in the above case, chose to represent the ditch
by Berkeley; you may call it Buchner, Spencer, or
Hume, for you my readers, if you with sufficient
patience pursue what I will now call Crowleyanity ' to
its ultimate end, will find that William Shakespeare
of Avon was not the only man in this fair world who
doubted not that by any other name a rose would
smell as sweet.

Let us now take an infinite series A,B,A,B,A,B.
The question asked is: which is first, A or B? And
the answer depends entirely upon the direction of

' Not only the lever of Archimedes, but also the fulcrum he
could not discover.

202 THE STAR IN THE WEST

thougfht. Science will say that intelligence is last, and
that matter slowly evolves into animal life ; in fact,
that matter (A) is first, and intelligence (B) is second.
The idealists and sankhyds will put intelligence (B)
first, and the series will run B,A,B,A,B,A. Both,
however, are indicating the same chain ; but Crowley,'
like the philosophers of the Vedanta, strides beyond
both intellect and matter to find an " I" (purusha) or
self, which is beyond all intellect, and of which in-
tellect is but the borrowed light, as Patanjali says in
one of his yoga aphorisms: " The seer is intelligence
only, and though pure, sees through the colouring of
the intellect."

In " Pentecost," Crowley writes:

You know for me the soul is nought
Save a new phantom in the thought,
That thought itself impermanent,
Save as a casual element
With such another may combine
To form now water and now wine;
The element itself may be
Changeless to all eternity,
But compounds ever fluctuate
With time or space or various state.
(Ask chemists else !) So I must claim
Spirit and matter are the same
Or else the prey of putrefaction.^

And we intend to take it as such, otherwise, like

^ This is the earlier Fichtean Crowley, though he has already
passed through Schelling to Hegel, and grouped this triad in
one, as it were Fichte in excelsis; not the middle, who has
called the triad ' ' Schelling " ; still less the latter, who, perceiv-
ing the antinomies of reason, dismisses alike the data and con-
clusions of all the sciences with an all-embracing scepticism,
while he devotes life to the perfecting of an instrument by whose
aid we may eventually be able to make a fresh start.

^ Sword of Song, Pentecost, vol. ii, p. 170.

THE NEW WINE 203

Mysticus, we, if we enter the vortex of subjectivity
and objectivity, " shall be tossed about as the world
this 2,500 years." '

IDEALISM

In the philosophy of Plato idealism took the shape
of a strictly formal characteristic, there was nothing
in itself, as Kant might have explained it, an idea
however dating back long before either Plato or Kant,
and to be first found in any degree of maturity in the
Upanishads of post-vedic India. Form was reality,
and nothing else, it was the sole and only essence.
From such metaphysics rose numerous modified forms
which may be roughly classed under the name of
Spiritualism (Malebranche). They asserted that matter
objectively was illusion or maya, and that the world
problem could only be considered as a reality sub-
jectively in the thoughts as "thinks", in fact the world
real was simply an elaboration of these "thinks."
These spiritualistic philosophies stagnating for a time
were soon mystified by man's inherent longing for the
wonderful,^ and developed into various systems of
Spiritism and Mysticism, both high and low. Of the
latter the most renowned, and in many ways the most
profound, was the Philosophy of the Qabalah.

1 Time, vol. ii, p. 268.

^ " The imagination of man is naturally sublime, delighted
with whatever is remote and extraordinary, and running with-
out control into the most distant parts of space and time in order
to avoid the objects, which custom has rendered too familiar
to it." — An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, Hume
(Religion of Science Library), p. 172.

204 THE STAR IN THE WEST

The Qabalah, if it may be called a philosophy ; for
it was never synthetical, or concrete, being a con-
glomerated mass of ecstatic ideals and exalted desires,
evolved in the mind of man as an attempt to grasp
all possible quantities emanating from the Ain Soph,
which in itself remained Zero.

Turning now for a short time from the Mystic to
the Idealistic philosophy, we find that though both are
closely united, the former founds its system on man's
wondering ignorance in trying to link subject and
object esoterically, whilst the latter builds up reality
in mind perceptions, treating nothing as illusion but
the reality of the materialists. Berkeley, when he de-
clared in his transcendental philosophy that esse—percipi
was only in reality reiterating the idea held ages pre-
viously in "The Veil of Maya." Kant threw more
fuel on the Berkeleyan argument when he stated in
his " Critique of Pure Reason," that we can have no
positive knowledge whatsoever of ' ' the thing in it-
self." Since then this idea of the subjectivity of reality
has gained more ground under Hegel, and later in
numerous works dealing directly or indirectly with
Spiritual Monisms. Even in the middle of the eight-
eenth century, forty years after Berkeley had stimu-
lated the dry bones of this problem into a vigorous
existence, materialism waged but a losing, or at best
an unprogressive war against it. Holbach himself
had to admit that, though he considered Berkeley's
arguments as sheer sophisms, they nevertheless re-
mained unanswerable. . . Idealism may not be correct,
neither may its intenser form Spiritualism ; but so far
as this argument is of value, neither may Realism nor
Materialism ; for both these philosophies have, as we
have just seen, resolved themselves into an infinite

THE NEW WINE 205

chain of events, which may be expressed under the
symbolization of A, B, A, B, A, B, the ultimate issue
being the triumph of Agnosticism.

All the wisest from all ages with all their wisdom
finally have had to utter " We Know Not," and write
" ignoramus " across their life's work. Yet is not this
infallibly as it must be, if we search for an absolute
truth by relative means ; we cannot prove that it does
not exist, any more than we can prove that it does ;
for if we dare to attempt to tread so thorny a path
with the utmost success the land we reach is but the
land of Weissnichtwo.

The world does not exist outside me. I am the
world; but what am I? Herein lies the greatest of
riddles.

This question, this gigantic " What?" Crowley sets
forth lucidly enough in " Pentecost" and "Ascension
Day." He writes:

To calculate one hour's result

I find surpassingf difficult ;

One year's effect, one moment's cause ;

What mind could estimate such laws?

Who then (much more !) may act aright

Judged by and in ten centuries' sight ?^

He shows us how utterly inadequate are our powers,
how utterly absurd it is of us to hanker after infinite
ideals with our finite minds. As a child cries for the
moon, so do we cry for our ideal, ultimate, absolute,
call it what you will ; the First Cause in Philosophy,
the God of Religion. In the end our finite understand-
ings burst like bubbles.

The rampant positivism of to-day is so drunk on

^ Sword of Song, Ascension Day, vol. ii, p. 155.

2o6 THE STAR IN THE WEST

the spume of the oceanic knowledge of the deep, that
it sees no further than the tip of its own glowing-
nose, upon which roseate point it hypnotises itself
into a hypermnemonic state ot " Knowallableness" ;
this, if not more so, is certainly quite as fatuous a
standpoint to hold as that of Spencer, in his philosophy
of the " Unknowable." Both are dogmatisms, and as
such condemn the very object of their existence.

It is seldom remembered that the Infinite need not
necessarily mean the boundless ; for there is the
infinitely small, just as there is the infinitely great, as
Crowley states in Aceldama :

The inmost is the home of God. He moulds Infinity,
The great within the small, one stainless unity ! '

The power of the small is grandly described in the
following :

Yet ants may move the mountain ; none is small
But he who stretches out no arm at all ;

Toadstools have wrecked fair cities in a night,
One poet's song may bid a kingdom fall.^

And that which is below is as that which is above ;
for:

Time is to us the Now, and Space the Here;
From us all Matter radiates, is a part
Of our own thoughts and souls.'

So we see :

For Gods, and devils too, I find
Are merely modes of my own mind !*

^ Aceldama, vol. i, p. 4.

' Mysteries : Lyrical and Dramatic, vol. i, p. 1 10.

' Ibid. vol. i, p. 119.

* Sword of Song, Pentecost, vol. ii, p. 177.

THE NEW WINE 207

" All is illusion," says Criosda,' and further back
in that weird play — "The God-Eater" — we have
already heard him solemnly utter :

Mystery ninefold closed upon itself

That matter should move mind — Ay ! darker yet

That mind should work on matter? And the proof

Extant, implicit in the thought thereof!

Else all our work were vain. These twain be one.'

In these five lines we find a clinching of the whole
argument. "These twain be one." No more than
this did Berkeley ever arrive at :

' ' But, though it were possible that solid, figured,
movable substances may exist without the mind,
corresponding to the ideas we have of bodies, yet
how is it possible for us to know this? Either we
must know it by sense or by reason."^ He never
denied the material existence of things, and was as
much a phenomenalistasan idealist. Crowley, similarly
accepting Egoity, does not however reject Non-
egoity, but envelops both.

In such a conflict I stand neuter.
But oh ! Mistake not gold for pewter !
The plain fact is : materialise
What spiritual fact you choose,
And all such turn to folly — lose
The subtle splendour, and the wise
Love and dear bliss of truth. Beware
Lest your lewd laughter set a snare
For any ! Thus and only thus
Will I admit a difference
'Twixt spirit and the things of sense.
What is the quarrel between us?

^ The God-Eater, vol. ii, p. 138. ^ Ibid. vol. ii, p. 134.

' The Principles of Human Knowledge, p. 39. (Religion of
Science Library.)

2o8 THE STAR IN THE WEST

Why do our thoughts so idly clatter?
I do not care one jot for matter,
One jot for spirit, while you say
One is pure ether, one pure clay. '

In pure Idealism, objects have no independent exist-
ence; but in the above, which is no less than pure
Hylo-Idealism, they have. Yet none to the individual
brain, until they have been brought into reciprocal
relationship to it. If the outer vi^orld is an illusion,
then the inner world of self is but a delusion, a mere
mirrored reflection of shadows cast by some blinding
sun; so hope some of us, as Orpheus did when he
sang :

This world is shadow-shapen of

The bitterness of pain.
Vain are the little lamps of love !

The light of life is vain !
Life, death, joy, sorrow, age and youth
Are phantoms of a further truth. -

This is but the chant of the Brahmin and the
Buddhist as it has risen and fallen over the East for
hundreds and thousands of years.

There no sun shines, no moon, nor glimmering star.
Nor yonder lightning, the fire of earth is quenched.
From him, who alone shines, all else borrows its brightness,
The whole world bursts into splendour at his shining.

K&thaka Upanishad, v, 15.

The veil of Maya shrouds the true aspect of things ;
it cuts off the outer from the inner world, rendering
the former esoteric, and the latter exoteric. This idea
of the All as the One, is magnificently described in

^ The Sword of Song, Pentecost, vol. ii, p. 183.
'■' The Argonauts, iv, vol. ii, p. no.

THE NEW WINE 209

"The Ultimate Voyage," when the Voice of God —
the voice of the Soul that is — says :

" The last and greatest is within you now."
Then fire too subtle and omniscient
Devoured our substance, and we moved again
Not down, nor up, but inwards mystically
Involving self in self, and light in light.
And this was not a pain, but peaceable
Like young-eyed love, reviving; it consumed
And consecrated and made savour sweet
To our changed senses. And the dual self
Of love grew less distinct and I began
To feel her heart in mine, her lips in mine. . . .
Then mistier grew the sense of God without,
And God was I, and nothing might exist.
Subsist, or be at all, outside of Me,
Myself Existence of Existences.^

This mag-nificent passage is the very consummation
of idealism. The sense of God the crude outer reality
growing dim, dimmer, and yet more dim ; till finally
it is absorbed in Self. And yet when we with our five
senses, search for a pure ideal, an absolute truth, a
God outside of ourselves, our failure is certain.

To attempt such a course is but to leap into the
inane, and he who should set out on the search for
God in realms trod alone by reason, is as certain
of destruction as he who with mortal foot should
attempt to walk the billowy waves of the Galilean
sea. Tannhauser's falsely expressed aspirations begot
within him theVenusberg; seeking for that which was
beneath his own true self, he failed ; and it was not
till he awoke from the dream of God, that he was able
to free himself from the drear arms of Materialism.
So with us, not until we wake from the God-drunken

^ Mysteries : Lyrical and Dramatic, vol. i, p. 98.
P

2IO THE STAR IN THE WEST

carouse of the night, and ourselves become as Gods,
shall we conceive God. Hie labor, hoc opus est:

This is my secret — in a man's delight

To lose the stubborn ecstasy for God !

To thus clear knowledge hath my path been trod

In deepest hell — in the profoundest sky !

This knowledge, the true immortality,

I came unto through pain and tears.

Tigerish hopes, and serpent loves, and dragon fears,

Most bitter kisses, salted springs and dry;

In those deep caverns and slow-moving years,

When dwelt I, in the Mount of Venus, even I ! '

CROWLEYANITY

Quod utilius Deus patefieri sinet, quod autem major'is
mmnenti est, vulgo adhuc latet usque ad Eliae Artistae
adventum. quando is venerit.

God will permit a discovery of the highest import-
ance to be made, it must be hidden till the advent of
the artist Elias. Thus prognosticated Paracelsus,' and
further that divine philosopher predicted :

Hoc item verum est nihil est absconditum quod non
sit retegendum; ideo, post me veniet cujus magnate
nundum vivit qui multa reveldbit. And it is true there
is nothing concealed which shall not be discovered ;
for which cause a marvellous being shall come after
me, who as yet lives not, and who shall reveal many
things.

And I for one take it that the prophecy has now

' Tannhauser, vol. i, p. 256.

^ Paracelsus once assured the students of Avicenna and
Galen that his shoe-ties knew more than these two physicians ;
and that all the universities, and all the writers united were less
instructed than the hairs of his beard. How much more now so
Crowley.

THE NEW WINE 211

been fulfilled : Aleister Crowley is the artist Elias, the
marvellous being whom God has permitted to make a
discovery of the highest importance in his illuminative
philosophy of Crowleyanity, in the dazzling and flash-
ing light of which there is nothing concealed which
shall not be discovered.

It has taken 100,000,000 ' years to produce Aleister
Crowley. The world has indeed laboured, and has at
last brought forth a man. Bacon blames the ancient
and scholastic philosophers for spinning webs, like
spiders out of their own entrails ; the reproach is
perhaps unjust, but out of the web of these spiders,
Crowley has himself twisted a subtle cord, on which
he has suspended the universe, and swinging it round
has sent the whole fickle world conception of these
excogitating spiders into those realms which lie behind
Time and beyond Space. He stands on the virgin rock
of Pyrrhonic-Zoroastrianism, which unlike the Hindu
world-conception, stands on neither Elephant nor
Tortoise, but on the Absolute Zero of the meta-
physical Qabalists.

The question now is, what is Crowleyanity or
Pyrrhonic-Zoroastrianism ? and the answer is as
follows :

" Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He
that Cometh in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the
highest ! " For this day ^ there has been born in Albion
a greater than David Hume, and a more illustrious
than David Home,^ even had he been genuine.

And he shall be called " Immanuel," that is " God

' Vide Haeckel, " Last words on Evolution,'' p. 120.

^ i2th October, 1875.

3 D. D. Home, the Medium,

212 THE STAR IN THE WEST

with us," or being interpreted Aleister Crowley, the
spiritual son of Immanuel whose surname was Cant! '
And as the doctrine taught by Jesus Christ became
known as Christianity, so let this theurgy, as ex-
pounded by this marvellous being, be known as
Crowleyanity : or in other words, according to the
mind of the reader ; — Pyrrhonic-Zoroastrianism,
Pyrrhonic- Mysticism, Sceptical-Transcendentalism,
Sceptical - Theurgy, Sceptical -Energy, Scientific -
Illuminism, or what you will ; for in short it is the
conscious communion with God on the part of an
Atheist, a transcending of reason by scepticism of the
instrument, and the limitation of scepticism by direct
consciousness of the Absolute. To attain to such an
illumination the mind of a Huxley and the soul of a
Loyola must be united in one person. And this illu-
mination must be as definite a phenomenon as orgasm,
following which we find the material world, and its
foundation the world of thought, as honestly set down
to hallucination as a ghost would be. Construct the
Temple in the place of the Manger, on the site of the
ruins of religion and philosophy, but with the stones
of the unfinished and abandoned Hall of Science. And
in it let Semiramis, heavy with child by the Holy Ghost,
possess the couch of labour, once crushed by the agon-
ized form of Mary ; and bring to light that unmistak-
able phenomenon, by which no woman could doubt
whether or no she has ever been a mother, and in which
no adept can doubt that he is one.

Religion and Science have for many years seemingly
run antagonistic to each other, but in reality their
antagonism has been of a superficial nature, and

1 Vide Prolegomena. Bohn's ed., p. xxi.

THE NEW WINE 213

fundamentally they at heart are one. The former hav-
ing postulated an eternal " creator," a something out
of something — God ; the latter postulated an eternal
"creation," a something for ever something — Matter.

" The mere terrestrial-minded man
Knows not the thing's of God, nor can
Their subtle meaning understand? "
A sage, I say, although he mentions
Perhaps the best of his inventions,
God.^

Then under the daedal wand of Newton and Berke-
ley, Science disclosed the fact that Matter is Hylo-
Zoic — a fact already supposed by Spinoza — that is,
that within Matter itself lives an indwelling energy
and power, and also that matter as body solely exists
in the automorphism of experience. Yet still do the
vapours of Animistic-Materialism cling round the
forms of Newton and Berkeley, and out of its blinding
smoke issues the flame of Hylo-Phenomenalism or
Solipsimal-Automorphism ; itself to blind in turn, and
to scorch the chill hands of the night which were being
extended round its welcome fire. The God-idea cling-
ing to Philosophy, similarly as the phlogiston-idea
clung so long to the principles of chemistry. Now
follows the philosophic fall. Seeking the Absolute in
sense-perceptions, and listening to the chatter of the
carnal snake, these wise men, these latter-day philo-
sophers, not finding eternal knowledge in the deific
apple, ceased munching so wry a pippin, declaring the
God of Religion, the Matter of Science, Unknowable,
a thing in itself, like 'the jinnee in the vase, or dis-
persed throughout Space as the jinnee when the vase

^ Pentecost, vol. ii, p. 176.

214 THE STAR IN THE WEST

was opened. Or else again, like the present-day
Rationalists, they have once more coaxed the Almighty
back into his leaden casket, and heaved him out again
into the black depths of that ocean of ignorance from
which he had been drawn, a bottled " succedaneum."
Thus Berkeley, bypostulating a God, himself showed
that reason was wanting ; so the scepticism of Pyrrho
was once again applied to the defective mental ma-
chinery, which burst like a faulty boiler on due pres-
sure being brought to bear upon it by David Hume.
The final judgement of the senses was doubted, but
only partially, men sought the link which connected
cause and effect — the excluded middle-consciousness,
and what may be called super-consciousness ; and to
attain this end Crowley has applied the whole of his
Pyrrhonic-Iconoclasm to break down the vulgar Ideal-
ism of Theology, as well as the vulgar Realism of the
empirical Sciences.

There 's the true refuge of the wise ;
To overthrow the Temple guards,
Deny reality. "^

In fact to crush and annihilate by means of a sceptical-
theurgy the rational fifth-Monarchism of the Scientific
cults. Philosophy and Science have up to the present
apprehended things per nos, from this day forward
they will, under the atheistic theurgy of Crowleyanity,
know things perse. The Ultima Thule of our rigorous
journey will at last be discernible on the horizon of
our minds, and the mixed drinks of the stumbling
Scoto-German Bacchantes will give way to the pure
amrita of lacchus.

The above may be symbolized as follows :

' The Sword of Song, Pentecost, vol. ii, p. 176.

THE NEW WINE

215

In the centre is Mysticism which links together Idealism
and Realism, or the Ego to the Non-Ego, and at the same
time holds them apart. Without it Idealism becomes Absolute
Subjectivity, and Realism Absolute Objectivity. (N.B. The
circle of Idealism is the only entirely white circle in the sym-
bol, and that of Realism the only entirely black one. The
" Jakin " and " Bohaz " of King Solomon's Temple). Idealism
and Realism are further connected by the Hvlo-Idealistic
circle, which expresses them in terms of science ; and the whole
is encircled by the ring of Agnosticism, beyond which philo-
sophy as philosophy cannot penetrate. The three circles of
Mysticism, Hylo-ldealism (Idealism and Realism), and Agnos-
ticism ; or Magic, Science, and Philosophy, are all bisected by
the Pyrrhonistic Line of doubt which alone vanishes in the
circumference of Crowleyanity. This is the outer circle of
all, forming, with the Pyrrhonistic Line, a perfect Yin and
Yang ; itself the unutterable T A O.

2i6 THE STAR IN THE WEST

To attain to the ne plus ultra of Crowleyanity, it
will be necessary to arrive at a state of desperate de-
spair, a state in which the equilibrium of both body
and mind are balancing between conscious alienation
and unconscious insanity; and this state is the Cer-
berus we all have to pass before we can regain the
blissful arms of our long-lost Eurydice. To clearly
illuminate the Orphic progress through the Plutonic
regions of Philosophy, it will be necessary, first of all
to satisfy the three heads of the terrible offspring of
Echidna's womb, whose names are Berkeley, Hume,
and Kant.

BERKELEY.

Berkeley, that "God-illumined Adept," ^ almost at
the commencement of his introduction to "The Prin-
ciples of Human Knowledge," states: "Upon the
whole, I am inclined to think that the far greater part,
if not all, of those difficulties which have hitherto
amused philosophers, and blocked up the way to know-
ledge, are entirely owing to ourselves — that we have
first raised a dust, and then complained we cannot
see."^ And naturally to expect, Berkeley himself,
though an Adept of a very high order, starting up-
wards through the clear atmosphere of the sky,
clutched the very fire from the altar of God, and then
in his descent to the dusty plains of Earth, caused such
a whirlwind to arise, that his immediate successors,
and even we who live two hundred years after that

^ Eleusis, vol. iii, p. 225. '^ P. 6.

THE NEW WINE 217

storm arose, scarce dare open our eyes for fear of being
blinded.

A mystic by nature and a priest by profession, we
must, in reviewing his bequests to knowledge, always
remember how much of the one side to deduct from
the other, should we wish to prove him either an Adept
or a Bishop. But with such inborn predilection, and
such outward assumption, it is easy to understand
why it was that he threw the whole energy of his life
into an attempt to refute the advancing scepticism
latent in the works of Hobbes and Locke. He saw,
and seeing fought the many children which had sprung
from the fertile womb of the Cartesian doctrine, of
abstract general ideas and secondary qualities ; which
alone found birth in the powers of language, and in
the delusion of words. But behind the didactic
Berkeley stands the mystic, that other Berkeley,
whose knowledge has alone been attained by a very
few ; for he spoke with God face to face.

" Could men but forbear to amuse themselves with
words, we should, I believe, soon come to an agree-
ment in this point . . . that the absolute existence of
unthinking things are words without a meaning, or
which include a contradiction." '

Berkeley, as has only too often been repeated and
too frequently misunderstood, did not deny the mean-
ing of stibstance as taken in the vulgar sense — a com-
bination of sensible qualities, and though it may be
possible, he stated, "that solid, figured, movable
substances may exist without the mind, corresponding
to the ideas we have of bodies, yet how is it possible
for us to know this? Either we must know it by sense

' The Principles of Human Knowledge, p. 43.

2i8 THE STAR IN THE WEST

or by reason. . . . But what reason can induce us to
believe the existence of bodies without the mind, from
what we perceive."' This point Crowley fully em-
phasizes in ' ' Time " when he writes : " a thing is only
real to us so far as it is known by us ; even its Un-
knowability is a species of knowledge of it : and, by
Savitri! when I say real to us, I say real absolutely,
since all things lie to me in the radius of my sensorium.
' To others ' is a vain phrase." ^ And as it has already
been shown in the chain A,B,A,B,A,B, it matters not
if the Materialist chooses to place his finger on A, or
the Idealist on B ; so in the above, Berkeley annihil-
ating the idea of a material substratum, at one and
the same moment, unwittingly immolates his own
cherished child on that same blade with which he has
just sacrificed his foe. And, seeking to supplant the
miserable huts of the materialist, Berkeley similarly
builds his gorgeous palaces on reason, perceiving not
that the foundations of both are the same, and that
one like the other will crumble into dust before the
blinding storm of dialectic dispute.

Berkeley, in positing Esse =percipi, considered that
he once and for all had overthrown scepticism, which
he defined as — the disbelief of the senses.' In "The
Principles of Human Knowledge," he states: "Our
knowledge of these (ideas) hath been very much ob-
scured and confounded, and we have been led into
very dangerous errors, by supposing a twofold exist-
ence of the objects of sense — the one intelligible or in
the mind, the other real and without the mind ; where-

' The Principles of Human Knowledge, p. 39.
^ Time, vol. ii, p. 269
Ibid. p. 51.

THE NEW WINE 219

by unthinking ' things are thought to have a natural
subsistence of their own distinct from being perceived
by spirits. This ... is the very root of Scepticism . . .
For how can it be known that the things which are
perceived are conformable to those which are not per-
ceived, or exist without the mind.'"' Shortly before
arriving at this conclusion, he had already stated that
as "the infinite divisibility of matter'' was now uni-
versally allowed by the most approved and consider-
able philosophers, hence it follows that there are an
infinite number of parts in each particle of matter which
are not perceived by sense. ". . . In proportion,
therefore, as the sense is rendered more acute, it per-
ceives a greater number of parts in the object, that is,
the object appears greater, and its figure varies. " ^
In other words the Self of the Idealist as the Not-self
of the Materialist, is purely maya, i.e., motion. But
a still more important contradiction creeps in here,
and curious to say, the very monster Berkeley set out
with lance in rest to overthrow, proves but a Quixotic
windmill which sends our gallant knight rolling in the
very dust in which he had hoped to lay low the
sceptical and monstrous giant. Thus in the place of
disproving scepticism he unconsciously cleared the
way for the greatest of all sceptics — David Hume.

' Berkeley, throughout "The Principles," as well as the
"Dialogues," overlooks the Newtonian law of gravity alto-
gether, though he supposes that he himself is not the only
thinking entity in the world, his arguments lead one to infer
that he is. As an Idealist he proves that nothing can exist except
in mind; then finding he has overlooked the question of God,
as an Animist adds : that all things, he himself included, cannot
exist except in the mind of some Divine Being, failing (perhaps
purposely) to see that such a Being was also but a figment of
his mind.

» Ibid. p. 79. ^ Ibid. p. 55.

220 THE STAR IN THE WEST

HUME

Hume, at heart a thoroughgoing agnostic and man
of the world, saw the practical falsity of abstruse
philosophy, the conclusions of which were at once
dissipated by the "feelings of our heart," which re-
duced " the profound philosopher to a mere plebeian."
He forcibly asserts, that ideas of primary qualities
are attained by abstraction — " an opinion which if we
examine it accurately, we shall find to be unintelligible,
and even absurd." He further agrees with Berkeley
in stating that : ' ' An extension that is neither tangible
nor visible, cannot possibly be conceived," and that,
' ' The mind has never anything present to it but the
perceptions, and cannot possibly reach any experience
of their connexion with objects." ' And again that the
"... universal and primary opinion of all men is soon
destroyed by the slightest philosophy, which teaches
us, that nothing can ever be present to the mind but
an image or perception, and that the senses are only
the inlets through which these images are conveyed,
without being able to produce any immediate inter-
course between the mind and the object." ° However,
the great unknown waste of this "immediate inter-
course " Hume bravely sets out to explore.

As Berkeley had previously got hopelessly bogged
in the swamps of God, so Hume, avoiding the shore
line, set out on the same quest by way of the desert
of Scepticism, without the chart of so divine a know-
ledge, but with the compass of a more certain direc-
tion; nevertheless, soon losing his way in the arid

' An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, p. 163.
^ Ibid. p. 161.

THE NEW WINE 221

wilderness of doubt, he also left the great riddle un-
answered, to leap voiceless midst the desert wind, and
to dance songless 'mongst his bleached and rattling
bones. Further on we shall see how Crowley, setting
out with both chart and compass, like a second CEdipus
wrested the secret from the age-worn lips of the Sphinx;
for as he himself says :

Eternal mockery is the real ;
Eternal falsehood, the ideal."

However, Hume arrives at a negative result of ex-
traordinary worth. He took Newton's second law of
motion," i.e., of Cause and Effect, and wrote against
it a colossal "WHY?"

Berkeley, as we saw above, arrived at the conclu-
sion, that it was impossible to solve the question of
relationship between the things which are perceived,
and the things which are not perceived ; and in the
" Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous " he
further elaborates this proposition. Hume by a slightly
different road arrives at an exactly similar conclusion,
namely: how is it possible to judge the relationship
between cause and effect, or in other words the per-
ceived and not perceived?

"The first time a man saw the communication of
motion by impulse . . . (billiard balls) . . . what
alteration has happened to give rise to this new idea
of connexion? Nothing but that he now feels these
events to be corawec/erf in his imagination . . ."^

Hume thus arrives at the conclusion that cause and
effect can only be inferred from each other, and never

' Gargoyles, vol. iii, p. 93.

^ Every change of motion is proportional to the force im-
pressed, and is made in the direction of that force.

^ An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, p. 78.

222 THE STAR IN THE WEST

known. " Beyond the constant conjunction of similar
objects, and the consequent inference from one to the
other, we have no notion of any necessity or con-
nexion." '

"Their (bodies) secret nature, and consequently all
their effects and influence, may change, without any
change in their sensible qualities. This happens some-
times, and with regard to some objects : Why may it
happen always, and with regard to all objects? What
logic, what process of argument secures you against
this supposition? My practice, you say, refutes my
doubts. But you mistake the purport of my question.
As an agent, I am quite satisfied in the point ; but as
a philosopher, who has some show of curiosity, I will
not say scepticism, I want to learn the foundation of
this inference. No reading, no inquiry has as yet been
able to remove my difficulty, or give me satisfaction
in a matter of such importance. Can I do better than
propose the difficulty to the public, even though, per-
haps, I have small hopes of obtaining a solution? We
shall, at least, by these means, be sensible of our
ignorance, if we do not augment our knowledge.

' ' I must confess that a man is guilty of unpardon-
able arrogance who concludes, because an argument
has escaped his own investigation, that therefore it
does not really exist." '^ And he continues further on :
" And though he should be convinced that his under-
standing has no part in the operation, he would never-
theless continue in the same course of thinking. There
is some other principle which determines him to form
such a conclusion." '

' An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, p. 85.
^ Ibid. pp. 37-38. ^ Ibid. p. 43.

THE NEW WINE 223

"We must, therefore, know both the cause and
effect, and the relation between them. But do we
pretend to be acquainted with the nature of the human
soul and the nature of an idea, or the aptitude of one
to produce the other? This is a real creation, a pro-
duction of something out of nothingf . . . such a power
is not felt, nor known, nor even conceivable by the
mind . . .'"

We are now fairly on our road to Crowleyanity.
Having left Berkeley in the dark, feeling on the dusty
shelves of his reason for a flint and steel in the
spirituality of God, whereby he may burn in twain the
gordian knot into which he has tangled his under-
standing ; we now find Hume, in a similar manner,
groping for the handle of some bricked-up door, which
will lead him forth from the depths of that same night
in which Berkeley has already lost his way.

When Hume states: "he feels events to be con-
nected in his imagination " ; he is only reiterating the
words of Philonous, when he says : "I have a notion
of Spirit, though I have not, strictly speaking, an idea
of it. I do not perceive it as an idea, or by means of
an idea, but know it by reflexion." To which Hylas
very properly replied : " Words are not to be used with-
out a meaning. And, as there is no more meaning in
spiritwal Substance than in material Substance, the one
is to be exploded as well as the other." Philonous, in
answering Hylas then asserts acquaintance with that
nature of the human soul which Hume declared to be
inconceivable. " How often must I repeat, that I know
or am conscious of my own being ; and that / myselj
am not my ideas, but somewhat else, a thinking active

An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, p. 69.

224 THE STAR IN THE WEST

principle, that perceives, knows, wills, and operates
about ideas."'

This "human soul" of Hume, the "I myself" of
Berkeley are synonymous terms ; in fact, they are one
with the " purusha " of the Yogins, and the " magical
stone " of the philosophic alchymists. Hume arrives
at the conclusion : "that there is a species of sceptic-
ism, antecedent to all study and philosophy, which
is much inculcated by Des Cartes and others, as a
sovereign preservative against error and precipitate
judgement. It recommends an universal doubt, not
only of all our former opinions and principles, but also
of our very faculties, of whose veracity, say they, we
must assure ourselves, by a chain of reasoning,
deducted from some original principle which cannot
possibly be fallacious or deceitful. But neither is there
any such original principle which has a prerogative
above others that are self-evident and convincing; or
if there were, could we advance a step beyond it, by
the use of those very faculties, of which we are sup-
posed to be already diffident. The Cartesian doubt,
therefore, were it ever possible to be attained by any
human creature (as it plainly is not), would be entirely
incurable, and no reasoning could ever bring us to a
state of assurance and conviction upon any subject." °
And that, "a wise man, therefore, proportions his
belief to his evidence,"' and who can say that a wise
adept does not do likewise? And that " These ultimate
springs and principles are totally shut up from human
curiosity and inquiry " and " are probably the ultimate
causes and principles which we ever discover in

'^ Three Dialogues, p. 95. ^ Ibid. p. 159.

' Ibid, p. 116,

THE NEW WINE 225

nature." ' On this despairing position of Hume, Kant
bases his a prion.

BERKELEY AND HUME

Thus Hume arrives at the conclusion that all rela-
tionships between cause and effect are based on ex-
perience, and behind experience there is, " a certain
unknown and inexplicable something." ^ So also does
Berkeley in the "Three Dialogues" end in a similar
quandary which he calls " God." Starting out on his
quest by stating: "Can any doctrine be true that
necessarily leads a man into an absurdity?"' he
promptly proceeds to travel along that road which he
has warned others not to follow, and, having com-
pletely lost his way, and overloaded his thoughts with
the darkness of night, finding it impossible to continue
his journey, knocks at the creaky door of a miserable
tavern, and regaling himself on the common wine of
that strange country in which he has wandered, pro-
claims the hour of noon as the clock strikes midnight.

"I conclude," states Philonous, "not that they
[sensible things] have no real existence, but that, see-
ing they depend not on my thought, and have an ex-
istence distinct from being perceived by me, there must
be some other mind wherein they exist. As sure, there-
fore, as the sensible world really exists, so sure is
there an infinite omnipresent Spirit who contains and
supports it."* Midnight is striking, and we once again
begin the eternal (and infernal) chain A,B,A,B,A,B.

' Three Dialogues, p. 29. ^ Ibid. p. 165.

' Ibid. p. 18. * Ibid. p. 65.

Q

226

THE STAR IN THE WEST

Parallel Extracts from the " Three Dialogues

BETWEEN HyLAS AND PhILONOUS "
AND

'An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding"

"Away then with all that
Scepticism, all those ridiculous
philosophical doubts. What a
jest is it for a philosopher to
question the existence of sen-
sible things, till he hath it
proved to him from the vera-
city of God ; or to pretend our
knowledge in this point falls
short of intuition or demonstra-
tion ! I might as well doubt of
my own being, as of the being
of those things I actually see
and feel." — P. 91.

" Now, it is plain they
[things] have an existence ex-
terior to my mind ; . . . There
is therefore some other mind
wherein they exist, during the
intervals between the times of
my perceiving them: as like-
wise they did before my birth,
and would do after my supposed
annihilation ... it necessarily
follows that there is an omni-
present eternal Mind." — P. 91.

"As to your first question:
(how can you conceive it pos-
sible that things should exist
in God's mind) I own I have
properly no idea, either of God
or any other Spirit; for these
being active cannot be repre-

' ' The sceptic, therefore, had
better keep within his proper
sphere . . . For here is the
chief and most confounding
objection to excessive sceptic-
ism, that no durable good can
ever result from it; while it
remains in its full force and
vigour. We need only ask such
a sceptic, ' What his meaning
is? And what he proposes by
all these curio-us researches?'
He is immediately at a loss,
and knows not what to an-
swer." — P. 169.

" When he awakes from his
dream, he will be the first . . .
to confess, that . . . mankind
. . . must act and reason and
believe; though they are not
able, by their most diligent
enquiry, to satisfy themselves
concerning the foundation of
these operations, or to remove
the objections, which may be
raised against them. " — P. 170.

"While we cannot give a
satisfactory reason, why we
believe, after a thousand ex-
periments, that a stone will
fall, or fire burn ; can we ever
satisfy ourselves concerning
any determination, which we

THE NEW WINE 227

sented by things perfectly in- may form, with regard to the

ert, as our own ideas are. "^ origin of worlds, and the sit-

P. 92. uation of nature, from, and to

eternity?" — P. 173.

"For all the notion I have "The existence, therefore,
of God is obtained by reflect- ofanybeingcanonlybeproved
ing on my own soul, heighten- by arguments from its cause or
ing its powers, and removing its efi^ectj and these arguments
its imperfections. I have, are founded entirely on ex-
therefore, though not an in- perience. ... It is only ex-
active idea, yet in jnyself some perience, which teaches us the
sort of an active thinking im- nature and bounds of cause
age of the Deity. And though and effect, and enables us to
I perceive Him not by sense, infer the existence of one 6b-
yet I have a notion of Him, or ject from that of another,
know Him by reflexion and Such is the foundation of moral
reasoning." — -P. 93. reasoning." — P. 174.

KANT

On Hume's despairing "something," Kant builds
his a priori, and though the detail of his criticism
differs from that of Hume's, in the main result it
coincides, arriving at the same unleapable ditch, the
limitation of all knowledge regarding the reality of
phenomena as revealed to us by our senses. Hume
starting with the proposition that ideas are copied
from impressions ends in the unknown ; Berkeley
through a similar process declares bankruptcy in
God: Kant does likewise, stating in his "Critic of
pure Reason": "All knowledge (touching an object
of mere reason) can be communicated not logically
but morally ... I am morally certain . . . etc." But
what he means by the word '■^ morally " he does not ex-
plain, postulating in place of an explanation an "a
priori c&cX.&vaX.y ." To Hume's scepticism he answers:

228 THE STAR IN THE WEST

the object is unknowable per se, the subject is also
unknowable per se, because they both vary, conse-
quently ontology is impossible. But the laws and
forms of thoughts are universal and irrefrsigable, and
form an unalterable standard of certainty whereby
knowledge may be increased. A priori laws are not
derived from experience, but belong to the inherent
structure of the mind. Kant then sets himself to
answer the question: How are synthetic judge-
ments a priori possible? And his answer is: — Unless
cognitions are synthetical they can add nothing to our
previous knowledge, unless a priori they cannot be
universal, unless universal they cannot be apodictic-
ally true. Kant's reasoning runs as follows : Firstly,
there is a sensibility, a power of being affected by
objects, a passive faculty ; secondly, an understanding,
a faculty recognizing the affectations of the sensibility,
this is active, and responds to stimulation. The sensi-
bility, however, has its laws, and to discover them, we
must separate those which are multiple from those
which are one. The objects are variable, the passive
functions of the mind remain invariable, the multiple
he calls the material, the invariable he christens form —
Space and Time.

Space and Time are therefore the indispensable
conditions of all sensation, and according to Kant are
not deducible from experience, consequently they are
a priori. The understanding, similarly as the sensi-
bility, possesses certain forms called judgements, of
which there are four classes: " quantity, quality, rela-
..tion, and modality." These are the b, /yjo^z categories
of the understanding, and they are synthetic.

This a priori (Crowleyanity affirms) is no innate in-
tuition at all, in fact merely an abstraction from ex-

THE NEW WINE 229

perience, and an equivalence of statement. It may be
a postulation of our egoity, but it therefore need not
necessarily be so for all other personalities, as it
cannot be in any way demonstrated as final. Kant
did not have the necessary knowledge of taking into
consideration the fact of inherited experiences, as
Herbert Spencer was able to do, so worked at a dis-
advantage, postulating an a priori in place of organ-
ized intuitions.

CROWLEYANITY AND THE PROLEGOMENA

' To illustrate the infolding of Crowleyanity, it will
be necessary here to run through Kant's Prolegomena,
reducing his arguments to the terms of this all embrac-
ing philosophy. (To aid the reader, I will place all
criticisms of a purely Crowleyan savour in square
brackets.')

Immanuel Kant finding his master David Hume
enmeshed in the negative net of an excessive Pyrrhon-
ism, set out to free him from the tangled conception
of cause. To accomplish this end, and to avoid falling
into the same entanglement of empirical uncertainties
(physical), groping about in the dark for some weapon
which might enable him to free his unfortunate master,
himself fell into the same metaphysical pitfall, and con-
tented himself by declaring his strangling senior as
"free." In other words: "It (the source of meta-
physical knowledge) consists, then, in knowledge a
priori, that is, knowledge derived from pure under-
standing, pure reason" (p. 11).'' [Then it is im-

' These are the words of Crowley, the student.
^ Bohn's edition of the Prolegomena.

230 THE STAR IN THE WEST

possible and its extension zero; for the intension of
reason and its forms are alike built up by experience,
that of the race (H. Spencer).]

Having postulated metaphysical knowledge, Kant
then proceeds to subdivide it into two headings: i,
Analytic; 2, Synthetic judgements ; the first Crowley
would identify with [verbal propositions], the second
with [real]. First Kant states: "All analytic judge-
ments are based entirely on the principles of contra-
diction . . . and are . . . d. priori" (p. 13), e.g. " Every
body is extended," . . . "No body is unextended,"
e.g., " Gold is a yellow metal."

" Now, to know this, I require no further experience
beyond my conception of gold, which contains the
proposition that this body is yellow and a metal "
(p. 13). [But, answers Crowley, what of the proposi-
tion " Gold is a trivalent base? None of these things
are analytic. Thus gold must be reducible to the
noumenon, and so disappear.]

In the second proposition Kant says : That though
there are synthetic judgements a posteriori, "there
are also others of an a priori certainty," which " can
never have their source solely ... in the principle of
contradiction" (p. 13). "Judgements of experience are
always synthetic. It would be absurd to found an
analytic judgement on experience " (p. 14). [Crowley
at once answers, "All judgements are founded on
experience. This primary fallacy of a priori validity
is clearly the root of the great follies which follow.
I -I- 1^=2 cannot be doubted, but it is a definition, and
means nothing, being arbitrary. But 2 -1- 2=4 is a
synthetic conception.]

Similarly under this synthetic heading, Kant tackles
" Mathematical judgements, illustrating his concep-

THE NEW WINE 231

tion of straight which has no reference to size, but
only to quality, by defining "a straight line is the
shortest between two points " [which is certainly
untrue : ' "Two straight lines cannot enclose a space,"
is better ; for in the definition which he gives, Kant
does not seem to have grasped the true conception of
" straight."] Hume, Kant states, severed pure mathe-
matics from synthetic judgements a priori, and herein
made a great mistake, as all mathematical judgements
he asserts are synthetic. [But is his dogmatism cor-
rect? Crowley would disagree.]

[(a.) Mathematics is analytic, because a parabola is
but a name, and all its qualities are directly deducible
from its definitions, etc. , etc. , and therefore contained
therein, though not seen. (V) Mathematics is based
on racial experience, and even on individual learning ;
only a few highly developed brains can apprehend its
propositions. It may be doubted whether any synthetic
judgement exists at all ; for the moment it is made it
becomes analytic. This is obvious of " A " and " E "
propositions, and only not so of " I " and " O," be-
cause the subject is impure.]

Kant then rejecting metaphysics as a true science
(p. 21), asserts, however with confidence, " that certain
pure synthetic cognitions are really given a priori,
namely, pure mathematics and pure natural science,
. . . both . . . partly apodictically certain through
mere Reason." [However he fails to quote any such
proposition! And his " apodictic certainty" only
means that the human mind is unable to transcend
that limitation. Thus metaphysics is a mere branch
of psychology, for one thing ; for another, every result

' What relation is there between our conceptions of rectitude
and length ? None, till geometry informs us.

232 THE STAR IN THE WEST

obtained is merely a statement of limitation, and there-
fore every accession of knowledge is a vision of a new
vista of ignorance. Summa scientia nihil scire, has
yet another meaning.]

Having then as he thought discovered an d, priori
basis to metaphysics, he places before his reader the
crucial problem. "How are synthetic propositions a
priori possible'"? And at the very outset, assuming
pure synthetic knowledge from the Reason as real
(p. 22), attacks the problem. "How is it possible
when a conception is given me, I can pass out of it,
and connect it with another which is not contained in
the former," and explains the difficulty by assumed
knowledge a priori. [Rendering Hume's position now
impregnable, thanks to ethnology, etc., etc.]; and
then Kant asks, "How is pure mathematics possible" ?
[Again falling into the fallacy of supposing his own
brain to be without a history. It is curious to note
that Kant's a priori is but a recasting of the old myth
of Pallas, Wisdom, springing full-armed from the
brain of Zeus, and like the legend is a strangely false
assertion.] Thus, into the trap Kant sets out to rescue
Hume from, he himself falls, by asserting that: "it is
only by means of the form of sensuous intuition that
we can intuite things a. priori, but in this way we
intuite the objects only as they appear to our senses,
not as they may be in themselves (p. 29). [Thus Kant
himself proves the noumenon, the sole refuge from
scepticism, itself to be sceptical.] Kant must have in
some way felt the weakness of his argument, since in
the following page, he, in true Berkeleyan fashion,
in order to upset the sceptic, argues in a circle ; and to
prove the possibility of d, priori judgements, insists on
the sceptic proving an ct priori proposition. Having

THE NEW WINE 233

thoroug-hly entangled the sceptic, as he thinks, he
launches out an " apodictic certainty," very similar to
Berkeley's "God-idea," and defines "Idealism" to
"consist in the assertion that there exist none but
thinking entities." [Crowley at once denies the " cer-
tainty," and demands an explanation of "thinking."]
Then working through the Berkeleyan arguments
backwards, he arrives at defining. [Thing as a
(unknowable) power to produce sense impressions,
which is purely Berkeley or his antithesis according
as the power is conceived as God or Matter.] Here
we have struck again the fundamental chain A, B,
A, B, A, B.

Having now settled with " Pure Mathematics," he
turns to " Pure Natural Science," again assuming at
the outset apodictic laws of nature, which Berkeley
also assumed, and which Hume proved to be sceptical ;
such as "substance continues permanent" — a theory
on the same footing as papal infallibility, and about a
hundred years older — and that all that happens is
"determined by a cause according to fixed laws"
(p. 42). Concerning which Huxley states : " not one
of these events is ' more than probable ' ; though the
probability may reach such a very high degree that,
in ordinary language, we are justified in saying that
the opposite events are impossible."'

This is even going a step in advance of Hume, who
stated : "a miracle is a violation of the laws of na-
ture." ^ As to the conservation of energy and matter,
Crowley would say: ["they were arguments in a
circle (a); for the use of scientific instruments by
which they were discovered, implies these laws."]

1 Essay on Hume, p. 155.

' An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, p. 120.

234 THE STAR IN THE WEST

Kant would not say (a) but ^^ h priori truth " ; and as
to the laws of cause and effect, [if we accept caus-
ality, etc., then we must regard all as truly parts of
one thing, perhaps even as aspects of one thing.] And
Kant, after a series of analytical arguments, comes to
the conclusion that the legitimacy of natural laws
"rests on the necessary connection of phenomena in
an experience, in other words, on the original laws of
the understanding," (p. 67). The understanding draw-
ing its laws h priori not from nature, but prescribing
them to it. [But these original laws of the (Kantian)
understanding are themselves the result of the em-
pirical laws of nature, and of an inherited wealth of
experience; "Omnia exeunt in O." And it is certainly
not far from this to the Ego positing the non-Ego.]

At length, thoroughly entrapped in his own meta-
physics, caught by that very same net wherewithal
he set out to drag the infinite depths of eternity; he
defines the noumenon as the final term of an infinite
series, and asserts that the permanence of the soul
can only be proved in the life of man, "the proof of
which will not be required by us." Then standing
aghast as the phantasmagoria of his mind crowd past
him; states in the plainest words, that the Reason
itself is at fault, and casting it into the balance of
Pyrrho, weighs it out in due terms of Crowleyanity.

The following are the four transcendent ideas, or
four dialectical assertions of the pure Reason. To each
accordingly is opposed a contradictory assumption
(p. 87).

Thesis Antithesis

I
The world has a beginning The world is infinite in time

(boundary) in time and space, and space.

THE NEW WINE 235

2

Everything in the world con- There is nothing simple, but

sists of simple (parts). everything is composite.

3
There are in the world causes There is no freedom, but all

through freedom. is Nature.

4

In the series of the world There is nothing necessary

causes there exists a necessary but in this series all is con-
being. tingent.

"The above is the most remarkable phenomenon
of the human Reason, of which no instance can be
shown in any other sphere. If, as generally happens,
we regard the phenomena of the world of sense as
things in themselves ; if we assume the principles of
their connection as universal of things in themselves,
and not merely as principles valid of experience, as is
usual and indeed unavoidable without our Critique ;
then an unexpected conflict arises, never to be quelled
in the ordinary dogmatic way, because both theses
and antitheses can be demonstrated by equally evident,
clear and irresistible proofs . . . and the Reason thus
sees itself at issue with itself, a state over which the
sceptic rejoices, but which must plunge the critical
philosopher into reflection and disquiet." [Thus
another turning in the road of Crowleyanity has been
passed, another milestone has been lost in the distance,
a new vista is opening to us, and once again we gaze
on the delusive mirage of the Reason, the mere Zill
U'llah— The Shadow of God.]

"... Seeing it is quite impossible to get free of
this conflict of the Reason with itself, so long as the
objects of the sense-world are taken for things in
themselves, and not for what they are in reality,

236 THE STAR IN THE WEST

namely, mere phenomena, the reader is necessitated
thereby again to undertake the deduction of all our
knowledge a priori" (p. 96). [And since the noumenon
can possess no predicate — what is it then that it does
possess ? It is the Reason itself which is at fault ; the
delicate time-piece of Kant's intellect has gone wrong,
it has ceased to "tick," and with the terrific blow of
an a priori cluh, he proclaims it mended, and regulates
each chiming clock in the house of many mansions by
means of its handless face.] Thus has the great lion
of Crowleyanity set the little crab of Konigsberg and
his lunar hut in their appointed niche in the great solar
mansion of eternity.

At length we have arrived at the end of our first
series of arguments, which may be generalized as the
infoldment of all rational philosophies into one un-
certain philosophic problem. Berkeley, as we have
seen, opened the gateway of scepticism, and was the
first to vanish in the Absolute ether of Pyrrhonism,
which he outwardly symbolized under the form of a
Bishop of the Church of England. Hume following,
clutched vaguely in the night of doubt at a " some-
thing " he could not grasp, and whose watery sub-
stance trickled through his clenched and searching
fingers. Kant similarly losing his way in the night of
Hume's ignorance, struck a spark on the tail of his
shirt, proclaiming the day ; but as the flames rose and
scorched his fundamental basis, he, also, leapt from his
empiric hose into the cool comfort of that watery ocean
Hume had attempted to shadow in the palm of his
hand. Then behind these three gallant knights clat-
tered along their no less gallant esquires: Fichte,
Schelling, and Hegel, and in the distance, lost in the
dust of Reason, stand the present-day yokels of

THE NEW WINE 237

thought, thinking at appointed hours according to
appointed books.

FICHTE, SCHELLING, AND HEGEL

Close on the heels of Kant came Fichte with his un-
knowable appulse as the only potency of the not-self,
which assuaged the raging thirst of inquiry as would
a bottle of wine long since dry. Behind him Schelling,
who leaping into the clouds, grasped at object and
subject as existing actualities, calling the bastard child-
ren of his brain manifestations of the Absolute. Then
Hegel who, instead of sitting out on the universal
stairs with Berkeley's " Bishop," waltzed wildly with
some ethereal Absolute, which, whether object or sub-
ject, was in no case existence, merely the skeleton of
some phantom appearance, having no life in itself,
but solely in the absolute mirror of its reflection.
Each of these Titans, in his own manner, threw fresh
fuel on to the Berkeleyan conflagration, so hoping that,
by piling up the blazing mass, they might illumine
the entire universe. And how they failed the last five
decades have only too directly shown, by their stag-
nation in the realms of a certain and unknowable
Absolute; and in the parasitic growths of Scientific
Agnosticism, Scientific Positivism, Scientific Monism,
and the general overwhelming materialization of pre-
sent-day thought. Yet the seli per se remains just as
unknowable in a positive degree, as it would have,
had all the ages forever held their peace. Neverthe-
less the arguments which they set forth, ideal or
material, have in their frantic efforts to support it,
forced the whole gigantic structure to the ground.

238 THE STAR IN THE WEST

From these ruins of experience Crowley now rises up
a fiery phoenix, directing us to the only possible way
which will lead us to our much-desired haven of rest.

Motion must cease, irritation must be prevented.
Time and Space annihilated, and the divine " I " set
free from the sordid rags of the world, to be clothed
in the brilliancy of God.' This added "impulse",
which in the homogeneous protoplasm causes fission, is
as mystical to-day as that added " something " which
will cause the mind of one man to admire a Wagnerian
opera, and another a drawing by Beardsley. No sound
is in the air, vibrations only pass. No sound is in the
brain, molecular changes only result. Where then is
sound? It is a creation in the mind by the divine " I " ;
that unextended absolute Passivity, whose dwelling is
in that equilibrating activity which balances action and
reaction.

Hegel (outside the realms of the divine philosophers)
was one of the very few who partially grasped the
supreme truth of Crowleyanity, when he postulated :
" Being and Non-Being are the same." He saw that
pure being is, in its last analysis, beyond fertilization,
development, or motion, and is practical nothingness.

"The fertilization of Being, according to Hegel,
arose by the passing over, as it were, of Being into
its antitheses, otherness, or complement — that is, into
Non-Being. But this antithesis, otherness, comple-

' It should never for a moment be forgotten that any attempt
to construct ^positive philosophic system from these data would
be strenuously repudiated by Crowley. The danger constantly
recurs, because in the normal (educated) man the reason is
master. Like the hydra of Hercules, its heads grow again;
they must be branded by the torch of illuminism, as well as
smitten off by the sword of scepticism.

THE NEW WINE 239

ment, was in a real sense Being itself, for Being and
Non-Being, being equally nothingness, are in the same
category. Herein, however, were motion, interaction,
stimulus, and no response to stimulus rendered, not
only a possibility, but a reality ; and Pure Being, thus
enriched or fertilized by the double interaction, be-
came manifested as existence — that is, conditioned
Being. Pure Being, the Unconditioned, the Absolute
of Potentiality rolled round into pure Non-Being,
the Unconditioned ; the Absolute of Impotentiality,
emerged, energized, and conditioned, and became the
Limited, the Relative. This is the groundw^ork of the
Hegelian philosophy." '

Yet once again that added impulse arises in the
passing over. What is it? Crowleyanity does not, in
words, explain; for being beyond reason, it is both
inexplicable and undefinable in rational terms ; yet it
directs, and the weary traveller, searching for the
stone of the wise, has but to follow, guided by the
sure and certain hope that if he so will, it will guide
him to that great and glorious transfiguration he so
ardently desires.

TIME

Kant, as we have seen, places both Time and Space
in the realm of the a priori; a realm utterly devastated
by Crowley's scepticism. Spencer in answering the
questions. What is Space? What is Time? replied,
" Space is the abstract of all relations of co-existence.
Time is the abstract of all relations of sequence."
These definitions have been found wanting, chiefly on

' Absolute Relativism, p. 1 14.

240 THE STAR IN THE WEST

account of the doubtful connotation of the word abs-
tract, but with M"Taggart's emendation read:

Space is the synthesis of all experiences of co-existence.
Time is the synthesis of all experiences of sequence.'

So we find that taking the above as general de-
finitions, they may with equal accuracy be applied to
either the Ego or the race ; in the former case. Space
and Time vanishing with the extinction of the indi-
vidual; in the latter with that of the race. So also
if space be defined as ' ' the potentiality of all co-
existences," then in the destruction of all existences
Space will also cease to be. But if Space be defined
' ' as that eternal actuality wherein all other things
or no things may co-exist, then, even on the de-
struction of all things, Space would still remain."^
Yet this definition is extremely faulty, as Time re-
mains to be considered; which we shall now deal
with.

In Crowley's essay bearing the name of "Time"
the matter is set forth in a dialogue between a British
sceptic and an Indian mystic. In it, by a rather dif-
ferent route, he comes to a somewhat similar con-
clusion to that taught by Eckhart in Germany at the
beginning of the fourteenth century. " That the
creature apart from the Absolute, that is, God,
was nothing, that ' Time, Space, and the plurality
which depends on them,' are also nothing in them-
selves, and that the duty of man as a moral being is
to rise beyond this nothingness of the creature, and
by direct intuition to place himself in immediate union

^ Absolute Relativism, p. 74.
•" Ibid. p. 15.

THE NEW WINE 241

with the Absolute."' The two disputants, Scepticus
and Mysticus, set out by agreeing that the unlcnow-
able is unreal, and as the latter says with Berkeley,
" a thing is only real to us so far as it is known by
us."''

When Scepticus asks Mysticus, " How old are
you?" and receives the answer, "I am but an ulti-
mate truth, six world-truths, fourteen grand general-
izations, eighty, generalizations, sixty-two dilemmas,
and the usual odd million impressions,"" he is receiving
a much more correct and scientific answer to his
question than if Mysticus, like Mahatma Agamya,
answered, " sixty-two." Mysticus then turning to
Scepticus asks him the seemingly simple question,
"What is a 'year'?"* Scepticus answers something
about the earth moving round the sun, and is at once
shown by Mysticus that a man stating a fact in refer-
ence to "Since the Derby was run," would be more
intelligible than he who would say, " Since May, such
and such a day"; . . " for his memory is of the race,
and not of a particular item in the ever changing
space -relation of the heavens, a relation which he
can never know, and of which he can never perceive
the significance ; nay, which he can never recognize,
even by landmarks of catastrophic importance." °
Scepticus at once grasps the absurdity of such a
situation by picturing the cross-examination of a
farm-hand by a lawyer :

" ' Now, Mr. Noakes, I must warn you to be very
careful. Had Herschell occulted a Centauri before you

The Real History of the Rosicrucians, A. E. Waite.

Time, vol. ii, p. 269. ^ Ibid. vol. ii, p. 269.

Ibid, vol. ii, p. 270. ^ Ibid. vol. ii, p. 272.

R

242 THE STAR IJSf THE WEST

left Farmer Stubbs' field'? while the instructed swain
should not blush to reply that Halley's Comet, being
the sole measure of time in use on his farm was
133° S., entering Capricorn, at the very moment of the
blow being struck. " ^ Scepticus goes on to state that
H. G. Wells has put his finger on the very spot
whence all research must begin: and that is, "the
illusionary nature of the time-idea.'"' "You would say
that of two men born on a day, dying on a day, one
may be young, the other old . . . he lives the longest
■who remembers most."' Mysticus considers the de-
finition insufficient unless the "vividness of each
impression " is added to the " number of impressions."
Scepticus then shows that it would be possible in
thought to construct a scale of vividness from a to n,
by which we could erect a formula to express all that
a man is. " For example, he might be: 10 a + 33125
6 + 890 C + 800112 658 6 + 992/+ ... + ... + ... n,
and, if we can find the ratio of a: b\c:d:e:f. . .
. . . : n, we can resolve the equation into a single
term, and compare man and man."*

It therefore follows that "all states of conscious-
ness are single units, or time marks, by which we
measure intervals." So that Time is wholly and solely
founded on experience, or response to stimulus ; and
in no way on any ei priori judgement as postulated
by Kant.

Berkeley has shown us that it is impossible to form
an abstract idea of motion distinct from the body
moving," also that " motion being only an idea, it

• Time, vol. ii, p. 273. = Ibid.

" Ibid. vol. ii, p. 273-274. ♦ Ibid. vol. ii, p. 274.

' Principles of Human Knowledge, p. 11,

THE NEW WINE 243

follows that if it be not perceived it exists not ; " ^ and
in the "Three Dialogues" he again maintains this
indisputable fact :

Phil. And is not time measured by the succession of ideas
in our mind ?

Hyl. It is.

Phil. And is it not possible ideas should succeed one
another twice as fast in your mind as they do in mine, or
in that of some spirit of another kind ?

Hyl. I own it."

This clinches the whole argument between Mysticus
and Scepticus, as it did between the two disputants
Philonous and Hylas.

THE QABALAH

Before entering upon Aleister Crowley's ontological
essay on Space, it will be as well first to run through,
briefly though it may be, some of the more important
eclaircissements of the Qabalah, and the influence
this divine theurgy has alike borne on his poetry and
philosophy ; for his analysis of space is based on the
ontological assertion of the absoluteness of the
Qabalistic Zero.

Worshippers of a personal God are by nature ultra-
materialistic. Their God is but a friend, a mighty
man who will eventually pull them out of the present
bog of existence ; being too lazy to do so themselves,
they invest him with special powers ; once fashioned,
the next step was to endow him with an immortalizing

' Principles of Human Knowledge, p. 62.
2 The Dialogues, p. 35.

244 THE STAR IN THE WEST

energy, and then, curious to say, they discovered he
had given them, as a sUght reward, an immortal soul
for all the trouble they had taken in turning him out
a really nice, amiable, and respectable Deity. Having
magnified their friend into a God, they then proceeded
to enlarge their enemy into a Devil. This gross
materialism in accordance with the universal law of
polarity, set in motion by the hand of Idealism, pro-
duced as effect a fanciful spiritualism, which sought
in the mysteries of life an answer that lay still on the
cold lips of Death. These two powers, the Pantheonic
materialism and the Gnostic spiritualism, bore the
hybrid — Christianity.

As all religions have finally become subservient to
an interested priesthood, so have all religions (how-
ever spiritual they may have been in their youth) been
materialized and sacrificed on the altar of gain. To
this rule Christianity forms no exception ; once crudely
and sincerely spiritual, it has become deceitfully
materialistic.

God, who was formerly an Almighty Pleroma, is
now but the moke which carries the priest's eggs to
market ; and Christ, the Saviour and Redeemer, the
stick with which the wretched old jennet is beaten
along. Christianity is no longer what its name implies,
the system of doctrines as taught by Christ, but
diametrically the reverse, the system of desires as
wrought by Man. It is no longer " Sell all," but
" Seize all" ; or " Give all," but " Get all." Mammon
is the God of to-day, and modern Christianity is ab-
solute and unadulterated materialism. As such it is
not necessary to look far for its antithesis. Religions
decay through materiality, and whenever religions
decay mysticism arises ; for materiality cannot explain

THE NEW WINE 245

existence, neither can it quench the thirst of man.
Since Christianity has suffered from senile decay, what
have we found ? A new religion ? No. An old religion ?
Yes. Rejuvenated ? Yes. Man is too lazy to build if
he can reconstruct. The great mass of the people
yearn for something better than the existing concep-
tions of Faith ; leaderless, disunited, they fall an easy
prey to the charlatans who ever keep their finger on
the social pulse, and are ever as willing to pose, when
opportunity is offered, as seer, clairvoyant, or palmist,
as they are as trickster, tout, or quack. And the
result? A vast drift of earnest aspirations seething in
an ocean of ignorance. The great thoughts of old
prostituted to the gains and stupidity of modernity, a
great libel foisted on the past to satisfy the credulity of
the present ; a systematized thieving from the statue
of Isis to adorn the idol of Mammon, god of bankers,
brigands, and beggars. Astrology gave us astronomy,
and Alchemy gave us chemistry, both were antagon-
istic to the ideas of their day ; let us hope that
Psychical Research will give us a purer metaphysics.

Now the question before us here, is : how does all
this decaying and growing of ideals affect the poetic
philosophy of Aleister Crowley? And the answer is as
follows :

To the writer of this essay it seems on reading
Aleister Crowley's poems that the revolt against ex-
isting ideals and morals is more the outcome of spon-
taneous intuition than of meditative scepticism : and
so strong is the current, and so diverse and intricate
are its eddies, that for one who is not an adept, it
seems almost a forlorn hope to plunge into the boiling
cataract of his ontologic philosophy, with any expecta-
tion of reaching the further bank in safety. It would

246 THE STAR IN THE WEST

perhaps seem safer to forego such an attempt alto-
gether, but so alloyed have these mystical ideas be-
come with the general structure of his philosophy, that
such a course is rendered impossible, so that the failure
of safety would be only more ignominious than the
failure of attempt.

Aleister Crowley as we have seen is no Christian,
neither is he a gullible spiritualist, nor a gross material-
ist. Seeking an answer to the mystery, he first finds
it in the ontology of the Qabalah, and then finally
through Mysticism and Agnosticism, to their recon-
ciliation in a neo-Hermeticism, a neo-Rosicrucianism
— which we have already called Crowleyanity.^

Yet though he does not end at that barrier beyond
which the Rationalist cannot proceed, he by no means
rejects common sense and understanding as his Epode
on Nature clearly shows.

Nature my name is called. O fruitless veil
Of the strange self of its own self begotten !

vision laughterless ! O shadowy tale !

1 am Nature and God : I reign, I am, alone.
None other may abide apart : they perish,

Drawn into me, into my being grown.

None other bosom is, to bear, to nourish.
To be : the heart of alt beneath my zone

Of blue and gold is scarlet-bright to cherish
My own's life being, that is, and is not other ;
For I am God and Nature and thy Mother.

I am : the greatest and the least : the sole

And separate life of things. The mighty stresses

Of worlds are my nerves twitching. Branch and bole
Of forests waving in deep wildernesses

^ Not only has Crowley succeeded in finding all the scattered
pieces of Osiris which Isis discovered, but also his phallus which
she could not find.

THE NEW WINE 247

Are hairs upon my body. Rivers roll

To make one tear in my superb caresses,
When on myself myself begets a child,
A system of a thousand planets piled !

... I wheel in wingless flight
Through lampless space, the starless wildernesses !
Beyond the universal bounds that roll,
There is the shrine and image of my soul.'

Many of the believers in the Qabalah, as those in
the Vedas, will g-ive an almost endless antiquity to
the ideas contained in their books. In one degree at
least they are right, for the mysticism as contained in
these systems of thought is as old as thought itself.

The great system of the Qabalah is one of emana-
tion — a type of spiritual monism, an attempted ex-
planation of the nature of the Deity, within the
limitations of mind. Its correspondence with the
Talmud is more of method than material. That it was
of slow growth is very certain, that it is a conglomer-
ated mass of a multitude of efforts is also most sure.
The Zohar is its corner-stone, and the date of its
construction extends probably from the second to the
seventh century of the present era. Much of its logic,
psychology, metaphysics, philosophy, and theology, is
drawn directly from the Midrash. To make it superior
to profane literature its simplicity has at various times
been cloaked in a truculent obscurantism, many of its
students delighting in paraphrases and hermeneutical
constructions. Because of their unintelligibility words
were transposed, numericalisms added, till at last
much if not all its sense was lost in a maze of mental
legerdemain, and in such exegetical methods as

' Orpheus, vol. iii, pp. 156, 157.

248 THE STAR IN THE WEST

Gematria, Temurah, and Notariqon, which on the very
face of the argument seem to condemn a system which
aimed at supplying mankind with a great and beautiful
truth.

We should not like to say that Aleister Crowley's
poems are entirely guiltless of the accusation of ob-
scurity; but to the uninitiated more lies below the
surface than is ever dreamt of; and we do not consider
that the use which he frequently makes of words, or
rather names of an inward grace, should be considered
as obscure. It is not difficult for the most uninstructed
in the Qabalah to discover that Binah is equivalent to
inspiration or understanding, that Chokmah means
wisdom or revelation, or in fact to grasp the simpler
ideas contained in the Sephirotic Scheme. Without
such knowledge, in fact, half the pleasure is lost in
not understanding these poems, and a false idea of an
attempt to "flummox" the reader's mind arises. A
mystery is simply an unanswered riddle. If to a person
who knows not a single word of Urdu, I use such
expressions as " suar," " sala," " bahinchut," they to
his mind will be entirely sterile of meaning ; but not
so, however, to the initiated, who would highly appre-
ciate them (unless applied to himself). Such use of
words appears only absurd to those who fail to under-
stand their meaning. A word may be charged with
meaning just as a battery may be charged with
electricity. Unconditionally there is little difference,
beyond the literation, between "Hocus-pocus" and
" Gee-up." If I say the latter to my towel-horse, I do
not expect it to break into a canter; if, however, I
say it to my pony, and it holds the key of this mystery,
I do ; so with any other word. I say " hocus-pocus,"
and the gullible are wrapped in mystery ; or better I

THE NEW WINE 249

say "Hoc Est Corpus " over some bread and wine,
and the devout suppliant becomes filled with religious
fervour. As in physics there is a kinetic force, so in
metaphysics there is a kinetic ideation. To the Qabal-
ist, the Qabalah unlocks as a key the corridor of the
soul, and the pent-up sense rushes forth as some
prisoner released from his dungeon, a mingled mass
of emotion and reality. To the sceptic no change takes
place, for his mind is sterile and unable to conceive,
but his ignorance in no way proves that the Qabalah
is mere Buncombe. Because a weak man cannot lift
a certain weight, that is no criterion that a strong
man cannot. There is truth in everything, and truth
lies beyond mere utility. If we cannot understand, it
is sheer falsehood to say Yes or No, the agnostic mode
being the only right course open to us ; yet if it were
put to us to answer such a question as " Is the reverse
of the moon studded with tintacks? " " No! " would
naturally be the correct answer, and not, "I cannot
tell you " ; for as long as the bastion of our doubt is
stronger than the cannon of our enemies' assertion, we
then, temporarily at least, have every right to answer
in the negative.

To be a student of the mysterious is a very different
thing from being a mystic. That the author was the
latter must surely be disproved on reading " Ascension
Day" and " Pentecost," that he belongs to the neo-
mystics or theosophists is openly denied in a note to
the former poem, and in the preliminary invocation to
" Jephthah." In which latter poem the following may
be aptly quoted as showing how that, when reason
lies fallow, modern spiritism is steadily supplanting
Christianity :

250 THE STAR IN THE WEST

Master, the night is falling yet again.

I hear dim tramplings of unholy forces :
I see the assembly of the foully slain :

The scent of murder steams : riderless horses
Gallop across the earth, and seek the inane:

The sun and moon are shaken in their courses :
The kings are gathered, and the vultures fall
Screaming, to hold their ghastly festival.^

The search after Mystery is finely described in the
opening dedication of " The Songs of the Spirit " :

IVIine was the holy fire that drew
Its perfect passion from the dew.
And all the flowers that blushed and blew

On sunny slopes by little brooks.
Mine the desire that brushed aside
The thorns, and would not be denied,
And sought, more eager than a bride.

The cold grey secret wan and wide of sacred books.'

It is in this search that the soul unfurls its wings and
sweeps into the infinite ether of existence, bending its
course towards God in its own unutterable ideal.

With burning eyes intent to penetrate

The black circumference, and find out God. '

In "The Alchemist," or in that beautiful poem
' ' The Farewell of Paracelsus to Aprile. " " Struggling
in vain to what one hopes the best."' We find this
larger hope is here the keynote, as it is in so many of
Crowley's poems ; to mention perhaps the most noted,
we find this sacred flame flashing forth in ' ' Aceldama,"
'< Paracelsus," " The Ultimate Voyage," " The Name-
less Quest," "The Neophyte," and in "Tannhauser."

1 Jephthah, vol. i, p. 66.

^ Songs of the Spirit, vol. i, p. 29.

' Ibid. vol. i, p. 32. * Ibid. vol. i, p. 40.

THE NEW WINE 251

Many of the poems in "Songs of the Spirit" and
"The Holy of Holies," hold fast to this idea; and it
is this ideal, the progression from the Kingdom to the
Crown, from Malkuth to Kether, which constitutes
one of the most beautiful doctrines of the older and
simpler Qabalah.

The Qabalah guides us to a divine theurgy. Ac-
cording to the Zohar it is impossible to know God,
herein the Qabalah is Agnostic, it forbids the repre-
sentation of God, herein it is Rational. The Ain Soph
is the "All-pervading," the " Non Ens" dwelling in
the "Non Est," it is inscrutable to man's mind; this
vast Pleroma, Corona Summa, The All, is formless,
and is symbolized by a circle, it is Nothing. As the
Ain Soph is the closed eye of the Unknown Darkness,
so is Macroprosopus, who resides in the crown Kether,
the open eye of the Vast Countenance. And from
Macroprosopus through Wisdom (Chokmah, — mascu-
line) and Understanding (Binah, — feminine) there is
emanated the Lesser Countenance — Microprosopus.
The relation between these two is idealistic, being the
relation of the Absolute as it really is, to the Absolute
as it is conceived by man. And it is the search after
this relationship — God — that Crowley so frequently
and ardently depicts. Awful and terrible is its path ;
the very blood of the heart hisses, as water on hot
iron, as it rushes through its fiery veins fanned by a
flaming soul :

By the sun's heat, that brooks not his eclipse
And dissipates the welcome clouds of rain.
God! have Thou pity soon on this amazing pain.'

Struggling on, the hideous path is strewn with
' Songs of the Spirit, vol. i, p. 41.

252 THE STAR IN THE WEST

bleached bones/ and salt encrusted heads/ of those
who have failed :

So I press on. Fresh strength from day to day
Girds up my loins and beckons me on high.

So I depart upon the desert way,

So I strive ever toward the copper sky,
With lips burnt black and blind in either eye.

I move for ever to my mystic goal
Where I may drain a fountain never dry.

And of Life's guerdon gather in the whole.

And on celestial manna satisfy my soul.'

All the "Unholy phantom faces'"* of self, and of
sin, will be lost, and all the misty distortions that
crowd the brain ' will fade and wither :

So shalt thou conquer Space, and lastly climb

The walls of Time,
And by the golden path the great have trod

Reach up to God ! *

And then:

. . . there gleams from Heaven

The likeness of a Man in glory set ;
The sun is blotted, and the skies are riven —

A God flames forth my spirit to beget ;

And where my body and His love are met
A new desire possesses altogether

My whole new self as in a golden net
Of transcendental love one fiery tether.
Dissolving all my woe into one sea of weather.^

In many other of these poems do we find depicted
other phases of the philosophy of the Qabalah ; one,

' Songs of the Spirit, vol. i, p. 42.

^ The Temple of the Holy Ghost, vol. i, p. 190.

' Songs of the Spirit, vol. i, p. 42.

* Hid. vol. i, p. so. ' Ibid. vol. i, p. 42.

" /bid. vol. i, p. 54. ' Ibid. vol. i, p. 43.

THE NEW WINE 253

the Hermetic maxim, "That which is above is as
that which is below," we find stated in "The Philo-
sopher's Progress":

That which is highest as the deep

Is fixed, the depth as that above :
Death's face is as the face of Sleep ;

And Lust is likest Love.^

In "The Quest" and in several parts of "Tann-
hauser," we are conveyed into the maze of mystic
numbers, which we do not intend to enter here. " My
womb is pregnant with mad moons and suns,"" and
yet we ultimately feel, on reading deep into these
mystical poems, "Too wise to grieve, too happy to
rejoice. "

With one number, however, or rather with the
primal symbol of all numbers — O (zero), we shall
deal. In a slender pamphlet entitled "Berashith."
Aleister Crowley ontologically asserts the Absolute-
ness of the Qabalistic Zero.^ Let us as shortly as
possible now see how he arrives at this ultimate
genesis.

The ancient Hebrew Qabalah was as closely con-
nected with Assyriology, as it was with Babylonian
and Egyptian thought, Hindu mythology, and the
philosophy of the Vedas and Upanishads ; its concep-
tion of the supreme God was ineffable, for He bore
neither name nor attribute, being beyond the power
of human conception. Over the face of the whole
world we find earnest thought arriving at or towards
such a conclusion. In ancient China we hear Lao-Tze
declaring : ' ' What is there superior in Heaven and

' Song-s of the Spirit, vol. i, p. 34.

'^ The Temple of the Holy Ghost, vol. i, p. 166.

' Berashith, vol. ii, p. 236.

254 THE STAR IN THE WEST

Earth, and from which Heaven and Earth sprung?
Nay, what is there superior to Space and which moves
in Space? The great Tao is the parent of Space, and
Space is the parent of Heaven and Earth, and Heaven
and Earth produced men and things ..." A similar
conception of the Wisdom is held in the Chaldaic,
Memrah; in the Vach, or word, of the Rig Veda; in
the Honover or word, of the Zend Avesta; in the
Avaldkit&svara, or Kwan- Yin, the Sakti of Avtitdbha,
the boundless light of the later Mahayana Buddhists.
Again we find it in the conception of Prana or life
spirit of ancient India; the Atharva-veda says: ' ' Rever-
ence to Prana, to whom the universe is subject, who
has been lord of all, on whom all is supported." Prana
is the Purusha or aum, the totality of Brahman,
Vishnu, and Siva, of Past, Present, and Future. The
Wisdom, of the Book of Proverbs, and the later Book
of Wisdom; it is also the same power as the Eden
illa-ah of the Zohar, the Be' Raisheeth of many Qabal-
ists and Talmudists, the Logos of Philo and St. John,
and the Sophia of Plato.

All the above are Absolute ideals, and so can bear
only a relationship and no proportionate value what-
ever to our finite understanding, they can only be
watched, and have never been realized ; and for this
reason is it that they have never been appreciated by
the mass of their so-called believers :

I will not look at her ; I dare not stay.

I will go down and mingle with the throng,
Find some debasing dulling sacrifice,

Some shameless harlot with thin lips grown grey
In desperate desire, and so with song
And wine fling hellward . . . '

' The Temple of the Holy Ghost, vol. i, p. 169.

THE NEW WINE 255

Such is the step of their duality, when they face the
awful unity of their existence.

. . . their logic fails,
Their jarring jarg-on jingles — even such
An empty brazen pot — wise men deride
The clouds, that mimic whales.

Man's darkness is a leathern sheath,
Myself the sun-bright sword ! ^

Yet Crowley puts into the mouth of Tannhauser the
following as answer to the simple Elizabeth's asser-
tion, "but God is absolute Good"!

God slips you, He is Undefinable !
Not good ! Not wise ! Not anything' at all
That heart can grasp, or reason frame, or soul
Shadow the sense of! ^

Such a definition whether applied to God or the
Ain Soph is one and the same. In the Qabalistic
Dogmas of Pistorius we read even as regards Kether,
the Crown, "There is no name among Qabalists by
which the supreme King is designated ; they speak of
the crown only, which proves the existence of the
King, and they say that this crown is Heaven." If so
of Kether, how much more so of the Ain Soph !

Above the Crown Kether, the first Sephirah, is the
(rK)> ^'•^■> Ain, the No-Thing. " It is so named be-
cause we do not know, that which there is in this
Principle, because it never descends as far as our
ignorance, and because it is above Wisdom itself."'

" Not only does the Qabbalah repudiate the adage

^ Mysteries: Lyrical and Dramatic, vol, i, pp. 104, 105.
' Tannhauser, vol. \, p. 258.
' Zohar, iii, fol. 2886 (Meyer).

2s6 THE STAR IN THE WEST

ex nihilo nihil fit, i.e. , ' From nothing, nothing is made, '
that is, nothing can come from nothing, but it does
not believe in the absolute annihilation of anything
which has ever existed. ' There is not anything new
under the sun.'^ 'Not any Thing,' says the Zohar,
' is lost in the universe, not even the vapour which
goes out of our mouths, as all things, it has its place
and destination, and the Holy One, blessed be It!
makes it concur to Its works ; not anything falls into
the void, not even the words and the voice of man,
but all has its place and its destination." ^

" All things of which this world is composed, spirit
as well as body, will again enter into the Principle,
and into the root from which they went out." Zohar,
Part ii, fol. 218b.

The Qabalist Abram ben Dior, says : ' ' When they
(the Qabalists) affirm, that All Things have been
drawn from No-Thing, they do not wish to speak of
nothing properly to say, for never can being come
from Non-being, but they understand by Non-being,
that, which one can conceive of, neither by its cause
nor by its essence ; it (the No Thing) is in a word, the
Cause of Causes ; it is It whom we all call the Primor-
dial Non-being, because It is anterior to the entire
universe ..."

No clear formulated reply can naturally be given to
the Formless, all we can know concerning it is : that
Something emanates from No-thing ; that out of the
Formless emerges the Formed, how and why remains
unanswered : this alone is the only meaning we can
give to creation ex nihilo.

' But Crowleyanity may be new, for it is nof under the sun,
'' Qabbalah, Isaac Meyer, p. 124.

THE NEW WINE 257

Crowley explains the Qabalist's position thus :
"The Qabalists explain the 'First Cause,' by the
phrase: ' From O to I, as the circle opening out into
the line ^ . . . I am bound to express my view that
when the Qabalists said Not, they meant Not, and
nothing else. In fact, I really claim to have re-dis-
covered the long-lost and central Arcanum of those
divine philosophers." ^

" I ASSERT THE ABSOLUTENESS OF THE QABALISTIC
ZERO."

"When we say that the Cosmos sprang from O,
what kind of O do we mean? By O in the ordinary
sense of the term we mean ' absence of extension in
any of the categories.'

" When I say ' No cat has two tails,' I do not mean,
as the old fallacy runs, that ' Absence of cat possesses
two tails,' but that ' In the category of two-tailed
things, there is no extension of cat ! '

" Nothingness is that about which no positive pro-
position is valid. We cannot truly affirm : ' Nothing-
ness is green, or heavy, or sweet.'

" Let us call time, space, being, heaviness, hunger,
the categories. If a man be heavy and hungry, he is
extended in all these, besides, of course, many more.
But let us suppose, that these five are all. Call the
man X; his formula is then X'+^+i'+''+^. If he now
eat, he will cease to be extended in hunger ; if he be
cut off from time and gravitation as well, he will now
be represented by the formula X^+^. Should he
cease to occupy space and to exist, his formula would
then be X". This expression is equal to I ; whatever
X may represent, if it be raised to the power of O

' Berashith, vol, ii, p. 236.

S

258 THE STAR IN THE WEST

(this meaning mathematically, ' if it be extended in
no dimension or category'), the result is Unity, and
the unknown factor X is eliminated.

" This is the Advaitist idea of the future of man; his
personality, bereft of all its qualities, disappears and
is lost, while in its place arises the impersonal Unity,
The Pleroma, Parabrahma, or the Allah of the Unity-
adoring followers of Mohammed. (To the Mussulman
fakir, Allah is by no means a personal God.)

" Unity is thus unaffected, whether or no it be ex-
tended in any of the categories. But we have already
agreed to look to O for an Uncaused.

' ' Now if there was in truth O ' before the beginning
of years,' that o was extended in none of the cate-
gories, FOR THERE COULD HAVE BEEN NO CATEGORIES

IN WHICH IT COULD EXTEND ! If our O was the ordinary
O of mathematics, there was not truly absolute O, for
O is, as I have shown, dependent on the ideas of
categories. If these existed, then the whole question
is merely thrown back ; we must reach a state in
which the O is absolute. Not only must we get rid
of all subjects, but of all predicates. By O (in mathe-
matics) we really mean 0°, where n is the final term
of a natural scale of dimensions, categories, or predi-
cates. Our Cosmic Egg, then, from which the pre-
sent universe arose, was Nothingness, extended in no
categories, or, graphically, 0°. This expression is in
the present form meaningless. Let us discover its
value by a simple mathematical process !

0° = 0'-' = Qt [Multiply by i=^"l

Then — x -;-; = O x 00
n O

" Now the multiplying of the infinitely great by the

THE NEW WINE 259

infinitely small results in some unknown finite num-
ber EXTENDED IN AN UNKNOWN NUMBER OF CATEGORIES.

It happened when this our Great Inversion took place,
from the essence of the nothingness to finity extended
in innumerable categories, that an incalculably vast
system was produced. Merely by chance, chance in
the truest sense of the term, we are found with gods,
men, stars, plants, devils, colours, forces, and all the
materials of the Cosmos : and with them, space and
causality, the conditions limiting and involving them
all."'

Thus from the Hegelian abstraction of the non ens
we have at last touched bottom, and have come down
to the facts of real life. Empty space is the postulate
of all metaphysics, but all absolute quantities finally
must be beyond the finitely reasoning mind.

SPACE

This assertion of the Absolute Zero may truly at
first sight appear to be a somewhat exaggerated
statement; but on due consideration it will be dis-
closed, that not only do all physics and metaphysics
rest on this bed-rock of nothingness ; but, that also
both abstract philosopher and scientist alike, have in
no way leapt its fiery circumference. When the
scientist eternalizes matter and motion by asserting
their absolute indestructibility, he is merely asserting
an absolute unity, which in reality is a synonym of
absolute nullity — = I, but he at once, to propitiate

' Berashith, vol. ii, pp. 236, 237.

26o THE STAR IN THE WEST

his Reason, forsakes his God — (Ain Soph) — and sacri-
fices his only begotten son (Unity) on the blood-
stained altar of Evolution, by ascribing to it a ten-
dency to dividuality, thus barbarously immolating his
sacred child by rendering him one with the divine _fiai
of Genesis.'

Berkeley, nearly two hundred years ago now,
answered the scientists apparently for all time, by
stating : "... it seems no less absurd to suppose a
substance without accidents, than it is to suppose
accidents without a substance." And that, "though
we should grant the unknown substance may possibly
exist, yet where can it be supposed to be? That it
exists not in the mind is agreed ; and that it exists
not in place is no less certain — since all place or ex-
tension exists only in the mind, as hath been already
proved. It remains, therefore, that it exists nowhere
at all"^ — i.e., in the Absolute Zero. And again he
asserts, this time by the word of Philonous: "Con-
sequently every corporal substance being the substra-
tum of extension must have in itself another extension,
by which it is qualified to be a substratum : and so on
to infinity? And I ask whether this be not absurd in
itself, and repugnant to what you granted just now,
to wit, that the substratum, was something distinct
from and exclusive of extension? " ' And what is pure
extension? — Absolute Zero.

Thus the whole cosmic process resolves itself under

' " Heaven and earth and the ten thousand thing's come from
existence, but existence comes from non-existence." "The
T A O beg-ets unity, unity begets duality ; duality begets trinity ;
and trinity begets the ten thousand things."— Lao-Tze.

^ The Principles of Human Knowledge, p. 69.

" The Three Dialogues, p. 45.

THE NEW WINE 261

the one great law of Inertia ; so that the entire Uni-
verse lies before us, as Luther said of God, "A blank
sheet on which nothing is found, but what we our-
selves have written." Or again, in the words of the
divine Spinoza: "final or first causes are only fig-
ments of the human mind," bubbles which must burst
before the finite can once again dissolve into the in-
finite atmosphere of eternity. This seeming duality
is that which Crowley infers when he states: "In
any category, infinity excludes finity, unless that finity
be an identical part of that infinity." ^

Laugh, thou immortal Lesbian !

Thy verse runs down the runic ages.
Where shalt thou be when sun and star,
My sun, my star, the vault that span,
Rush in their rude, impassive rages
Down to some centre guessed afar
By mindless Law? Their death embrace
A simple accident of space? ^

" In the category of existing things, space being
infinite, for on that hypothesis we are still working,
either matter fills or does not fill it. In the former,
matter is infinitely great ; if the latter, infinitely small.
Whether the matter-universe be 10'™™ light-years in
diameter, or half a mile, it makes no difference ; it is
infinitely small — in eff"ect. Nothing."^ In the first
case being infinitely great all else is crowded out, and
it =0; in the second being infinitely small, the un-
mathematical illusion of the Hindus called "maya"
vanishes likewise in O. So likewise does Theism re-
solve into Pantheism, which itself dissolves into
Atheism ; the I = 00 = O.

' Berashith, vol. ii, p. 234. ^ Gargoyles, vol. iii, p. 85.

'' Berashith, vol. ii, p. 234.

262 THE STAR IN THE WEST

Another triumph for Crowleyanity :

Things as they are— of these take hold,
Their heart of wonder throb to thine !

All thing's are matter and force and sense,
No two alone. All 's one : the gold
Of truth is no reward divine
Of faith, but wage of evidence.
The clod, the God, the spar, the star,
Mete in thy measure, as they are ! '

The sum total of the Vedantist Crowley sums up
as follows : " ' I ' am an illusion, externally. In reality,
the true ' I ' am the Infinite, and if the illusionary ' I '
could only realize Who ' I ' really am, how very happy
we should all be! '"' Here we have the great law of
re-birth operating nowhere in nothing.

Thus the universe is laid open before us as some
huge ledger, upon which each being is working as a
clerk; some are called directors, some accountants,
some cashiers, yet great or small, high or low, from
the amoeba to man, they are all scribbling, scribble,
scribble, and counting, counting, counting, again and
again, " all the choir of heaven and furniture of earth,"
as Huxley says, " transitory forms of parcels of cos-
mic substance wending along the road of evolution,
from nebulous potentiality, through endless growths
of sun and planet and satellite . . . back to that
indefinable latency from which they arose." ^

As Crowley writes :

Where is thy fame, when million leagues
Of flaming gas absorb the roll
Of many a system ruinous hurled

' Gargoyles, vol. iii, p. 85.
' Berashith, vol. ii, p. 235.
^ Cited in vol. ii, p. 246.

THE NEW WINE 263

With infinite pains and dire fatigues
To build another stupid soul

For fools to call another world?
Where then thy fame, O soul sublime?
Where then thy victory over Time?^

Some few work out its gigantic columns of intricate
fractional figures, and close for ever the huge volume
before them ; yet the multitude works on, and though
individually they may falsify and erase, scribble over,
or blot out ; yet never at any moment is the inaccu-
racy of one single mite discounted in the general
balance; so the bitter tears of one man go to blot
out the sweet laughter of another, and as the spark-
ling stream and the muddy river both pour back their
boiling waters into that great ocean, from out of
which they sun-kissed arose, so do action and re-
action once again unite to build up that great unity
which is Nothing. Not one farthing is ever lost, ab-
solute co-operation exists, and the dividend Mysticus
offered Scepticus is paid out without fault or fail, to
all those most assiduous workers whose skill and
craft never tarries or tires : "In the first year Dhyana ;
in the second, Samadhi ; and in the third, Nirvana. " ^

In the beginning (sic) there is the ledger (Inertia) =
O ; in the middle there is the ledger open, action
balanced by re-action (lnertia) = 0; and in the end
there is again (Inertia) the ledger closed = 0. This
Idealism, if I may so call it, is very similar to the
conditioned and unconditioned of Hegel, to the meta-
physical unity underlying the Athanasian Creed, and
also to the Hindu Philosophy which Crowley so tho-
roughly grasped, when seeing the slough into which

' Gargoyles, vol. iii, p. 8g. ^ Time, vol. ii, p. 280.

264 THE STAR IN THE WEST

Spencerian Ag'nosticism was bound to lead, he broke
away from Buddha and the Buddhistic doctrines of
scientific doubt:

So lifts the ag-ony of the world

From this mine head, that bowed awhile
Before the terror suddenly shown.
The nameless fear for self, far hurled
By death to dissolution vile.

Fades as the royal truth is known :
Though chang-e and sorrow range and roll.
There is no self — there is no soul ! '

TIME AND SPACE

One question still remains before we dismiss the
question of Time and Space, and that is their homo-
geneity and accidental reality in the Ego. Being
forms of extension, Space permits Size, and Time,
Number, i.e., in Consciousness. This is the meaning
of "Time is the fourth Dimension." So the hard
thinking of Crowley arrives eventually at the trans-
cendental idea of considering Space as a plane, and
nearness as Time.

"Can Space be identified with Matter (Akasa,
means both), and Time with Motion? " Crowley an-
swers, "Yes." [For in extension Space is the single
immovable consciousness ; Time the extension in
number, the motion of the immobiles. A moving
body must move in Time ; for it is the succession of
consciousnesses. "It is here" — "it is there," that
makes us say, it moves. It is a succession of con-

' Gargoyles, vol. iii, p. 85.

THE NEW WINE 265

sciousness in a single consciousness, that makes us
say, it is of an extended body or idea. This taken
together reduces the universe to a lot of minima
cogitahilia, linked only by Time ; Anima explained by
Ratio.^

Space is Geometry: Time is Arithmetic, i.e., the
geometrical conception, the mathematical conception.

(see \
. c\ ^ \i\\!i.& pig ten times, that

is ten blue pigs ; yet in Space there is but one blue
pig. Can we reduce Space — which I spiritually com-
prehend so well, intellectually so badly — to a form of
Time (which, vice versa?) Yes, if we suppose that a

really accurate | .... }■ of consciousness would
[ division J

show that only the "minimum cogitabile " was truly

apprehended at once.] Thus in the comprehension of

Crowleyanity Space seems "Anima," Time " Ratio."

' Angelas Silesius also beautifully shows how Time and Space
are but inverse measures of the force of the soul, in the Cherubic
Wanderer, where he writes :

Rise above Space and Time, and thou canst be
At any moment in Eternity.

Sit in the centre, and thou seest at once
What is, what was ; all here and all in heaven.

I am as great as God, and he as small as I ;
He cannot me surpass, or I beneath him lie.

Self is surpassed by self-annihilation ;
The nearer nothing, so much more divine.

Wlio is as though he were not — ne'er had been —
That man, oh joy ! is made God absolute.

266 THE STAR IN THE WEST

BUDDHISM

As regards the beginning of all things the Buddh-
ist is discreetly silent, he (as Crowley says) neither
prevaricates like the Hindu, nor openly lies like the
Christian.

In the Is'a Upanishad we read :

Into dense darkness he enters

Who has conceived becomings to be naught,

Into yet denser he

Who has conceived becoming- to be aught.

In the second discourse of the Bhagavad-Gita we
also read:

Uncleavable He, incombustible He, and indeed neither
to be wetted nor dried away; perpetual, all-pervasive,
stable, immovable, ancient, unmanifest, unthinkable, im-
mutable He is called.

This is very much like the Athanasian Creed, after
having defined God in every possible way, to end up
by describing him as " incomprehensible." Not so the
Buddhist who went back to the older vedic con-
ception :

In the beginning there is existence blind and without
knowledge ; and in this sea of ignorance there are appet-
ences formative and organizing. — The Questions of King
Milinda.

We must, however, pass by the question of begin-
ning, and see how the Buddhistic ideals have affected
the poetry and philosophy of Aleister Crowley.

According to Buddhism, existence is sorrow, the
cause of sorrow is desire, the cessation of sorrow is

THE NEW WINE 267

the cessation of desire, which can only be realized by
following the Noble Eightfold path. This intimate
connection between sorrow and desire, as we have
seen, is vividly described by Crowley in many of his
poems. In " The Nameless Quest " we find the yearn-
ing " For One beyond all song." '

In " The Triumph of Man " we again find the same
idea crystallized, but in "The Ultimate Voyage," the
aspirant, on his spiritual journey towards the Supreme
Knowledge, at one point on his journey all but attains
Nirvana.

In many other poems do we find this idea of Nir-
vana. In "Why Jesus Wept" we have:

Thy flower-life is shed

Into eternity,

A waveless lake.''

Which reminds us of Sir Edwin Arnold's :

OM, MANl PADME, OM ! The Dewdrop slips
Into the shining Sea !

Again, in " The Farewell of Paracelsus to Aprile " :

My whole new self as in a golden net
Of transcendental love one fiery tether,
Dissolving all my woe into one sea of weather.^

Or,

Those souls that cast their trammels oif, and spring

On eager wing,
Immaculate, new born, toward the sky.

And shall not die
Until they cleave at last the lampless dome.
And lose their tent because they find their home.*

> The Temple of the Holy Ghost, vol. i, p. 189.

'' Why Jesus Wept, vol. iii, p. 41.

' Songs of the Spirit, vol. i, p. 43. * Ibid. vol. i, p. 55.

268 THE STAR IN THE WEST

Which compares with :

Till like the smoke of mountains risen at dawn,
The cloud-veils of the Ain are withdrawn.

Pure spirits rise to heaven, the bride.

Pure bodies are as lamps below.
The shining essence, glorified

With fire more cold than fresh-fallen snow,
And influences, white and wide.

Descend, re-gather, kindle, grow,
Till from one virgin bosom flows a river
Of white devotion adamant for ever. '

We might expect to find this idea in " Tannhauser,"
and do in the following verse :

This were my guerdon : to fade utterly
Into the rose heart of that sanguine vase.

And lose my purpose in Its silent sea,

And lose my life, and find my life, and pass

Up to the sea that is as molten glass.'

One more quotation we will give from the song of
Parthenope in "The Argonauts."

O mortal, sad is love ! But my dominion

Extends beyond love's ultimate abode.
Eternity itself is but a minion.

Lighting my way on the untravelled road.
Gods shelter 'neath one shadow of my pinion.

Thou only tread the path none else hath trode !
Come, lover, in my breast all blooms above,

Here is thy love ! '

The true Buddhist scorns the selfishness of heaven,
the idea of hell is utterly repugnant to him, to feel
that he is gaining eternal bliss whilst others are sink-
ing into everlasting torment, burns into his heart and

' Jephthah, vol. i, pp. 83, 84.
' Tannhauser, vol. i, p. 227.
' The Argonauts, vol. ii, p. 108.

THE NEW WINE 269

tortures his very soul ; rather would he be reborn in the
lowest depths of Orcus and point out to others the
path of salvation, than attain to the uttermost bliss,
whilst others are being damned. George Eliot, know-
ingly or unknowingly, set the true lyre of Buddhism
reverberating in her grand and noble prayer, "The
Choir Invisible."

May I reach

That purest heaven, be to other souls

The cup of strength in some great agony,

Enkindle generous ardour, feed pure love,

Beget the smiles that have no cruelty.

Be the sweet presence of a good diffus'd

And in diffusion ever more intense !

So shall I join the choir invisible

Whose music is the gladness of the world.

In the song of Orpheus we listen to the glittering
and mystic consummation of bliss :

This world is shadow-shapen of

The bitterness of pain.
Vain are the little lamps of love !

The light of life is vain !
Life, death, joy, sorrow, age and youth
Are phantoms of a further truth.

Beyond the splendour of the world.

False glittering of the gold,
A Serpent is in slumber curled

In wisdom's sacred cold.
Life is the flaming of that flame.
Death is the naming of that name.

That star upon the serpent's head

Is called the soul of man :
That light in shadows subtly shed

The glamour of life's plan.
The sea whereon that lotus grows
Is thought's abyss of tears and woes.

270 THE STAR IN THE WEST

Until the lotus and the sea

And snake no longer are,
And single through eternity

Exists alone the star,
And utter Knowledge rise and cease
In that which is beyond the Peace ! '

Buddhism may be called the religion of Science,
notwithstanding the fact that it arose in the East
hundreds of years before what we call modern science
was born. The youth of systems, as of individuals,
is lost in the mist of the past, unknown to themselves,
dimly apparent to others, they proceed through won-
dering childhood, ambitious youth, maturity, and
decay. The crucibles and retorts of the alchymists
are but the toys of youthful Chemistry, its dolls and
tin soldiers : God and devil, angel and goblin, are but
the fairies of Grimm or Andersen, or the gnomes who
spring through the flooring of Drury Lane to the
amazement of little children. The human first adores
images, then imaginations ; the little girl who loves
her doll will neglect it to tend her youngest little
brother or sister, whom she will kiss and pinch in the
true fashion of the human ; and when scarcely in her
teens will commence those necessary and attractive
adornments to enable her shortly to have a real little
doll of her own. The little boy will forsake his brave
little man in tin, in order to watch the soldiers in the
park, or turn the coal cellar into a robber's den, or
the garden seat into a pirate's bark, poetically he is
realizing the grim struggle which lies before him;
both doubt their toys, and eagerly peer into the dark
corridor of Life, which, alas, is so often but a Blue
Beard's chamber of despair. So with religions and

' The Argonauts, vol. ii, pp. iio-iii.

THE NEW WINE 271

philosophies, n doubt they arise, with doubt they
thrive, and by doubt they are urged on; Hope, Hke a
will-o'-the-wisp, dances before them, leading them
through marsh and mire, down dale and o'er hill,
deep through the frozen forest, and the broad sun-
scorched plain, over seas and oceans, over continents
and worlds, far, far through universes and systems,
past stars, past comets and suns, deep into the depths
of unutterable mystery ; and there through the aeons
midst, the birth of worlds, in the very womb of Time
sunk on some fleeting asteroid, is the aspirant, "O
Hope! O Hope! Where hast thou led me, ever near
me, never with me?" "On, on, O weary one, past
man, past gods, on, on to the rim of Time " : then
from the parched lips bursts the echoing cry, " Ag-
nosco, Agnosco."

The hyperbola of Time, the parabola of Infinity,
lie far to the north in the hyperborean regions of the
Unknowable. Knowledge is but a ring smitten into
the face of the waters, around it grows another ring,
the ring of a greater knowledge, around that yet
another, it is the ring of a higher knowledge still,
countless rings upon rings surround rings; then, as
he has reached some far distant one, man in his pre-
sumption shouts, "I have found God"; blinded by
the glittering projection of circles, dazzled by the
greater brilliancy of the jewels in their setting; " He
has found God." " No, no, O deluded one! not even
the ring that fits the little finger of God, hast thou
discovered, and, if thou hadst, it and its God who
wears it would be but the smallest gem in the ring of
still some other God, perhaps even of some other man,
who worships yet some other God, who himself is but
again some gem in the endless ring of Eternity.

272 THE STAR IN THE WEST

Yet hope, ever hope; for as a child lisping- its
alphabet learns how to probe the depths of dark and
cryptic books; so we, we too, have to travel many
an arduous league before we can obtain that crown
of Wisdom which is stored up for us. Be the God
that we can, grasp but the first ring, but grasp it
well, and be thankful if it but fit our little finger;
trusting that the flashing gems, fiery in its golden
setting, will light our way to the discovery of the
next, and the next! — and the next! till we become
one with the whirling gems of Eternity.

This religion of Scientific-Buddhism, either through
the narrow circumference of its founder's opinions,
or through that of his followers, becoming rational,
became absurd, when drawn out to its logical con-
clusions, as Crowley himself shows in " Pansil " ' and
" The Three Characteristics." ^ In the former he bares
the fact that in the " First Precept" Buddha himself,
by speaking this commandment, violated it, and in a
note very truly says: "The argument that the
' animals are our brothers ' is merely intended to mis-
lead one who has never been in a Buddhist country.
The average Buddhist would, of course, kill his brother
for five rupees, or less."' The mere fact of breathing
breaks the second precept. Buddha, being an habitual
adulterer,* constantly broke the third ; and the fourth
and fifth likewise.

• Vol. ii, p. 192. ^ Vol. ii, p. 225. ' Vol. ii, p. 192.

' It would be easy to argfue with Hegel-Huxley that he who
thinks of an act commits it (cf. Jesus also in this comiection,
though He only knows the creative value of desire), and that
since A and not-A are mutually limiting, therefore interde-
pendent, therefore identical, he who forbids an act commits it.
Vol. ii, p. 193.

THE NEW WINE 273

AGNOSTICISM

Ex Oriente Lux. As old as the Vedas is the idea of
Agnosticism, though in name it is not yet forty years
of age. Everywhere we look we find the 'Ayviiory 9fw
of Paul, midst the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Hebrews,
the Chaldeans, the Aryans, and the Chinese, and its
light is focussed in the greatest of the great : Socrates
and Plato, Malebranche and Descartes, Locke and
Spinoza, Hume and Berkeley, Swedenborg and Kant,
Hegel and Comte, Tyndall, Spencer, and Huxley.
Declining the mimetic, seeking the idiosyncratic, and
standing by the eclectic, it has stood and grown a
Colossus of Thought, ever young, ever virile, as age
after age has gathered round it, and as the years have
swept by it on their path to oblivion.

Between the theist and the atheist stands the agnos-
tic, and as the most vital point of attack is that which
lies nearest to the object to be attacked, the great
danger to theistic churches was threatened not from
the atheistical extremity, but from the Agnostic
frontier. The Agnostic said, "I do not know," the
theist said, " I do," hence the uninterrupted warfare
of 3,000 years or more, in which the priest has ever
been ready to lie for the greater glory of his God, as
S'afi well said:

Then speak the truth, if so a priest
May tune his tongue to anything- but lies.'

And of the gods of this greater glory, Amenhatep a few
lines further on informs us :

' The Fatal Force, vol. i, p. 142.
T

274 THE STAR IN THE WEST

For the old gods indeed go down to death,
But the new gods arise from rottenness. '

The pantheistic idea, which is so near akin to the
agnostic, we find set in the fine prayer of Jephthah,^
and still more so in the final words of Tannhauser :

I say, then " I "; and yet it is not " I "
Distinct, but " I " incorporate in All.'

It further finds development in the last four lines of

"Ode to Poesy":

No man.
No petty god, but One who governs all.
Slips the sun's leash, perceives the sparrow's fall.
Too high for me to fear, too near for man to call.*

And arrives at full manhood in such fine lines as the

following :

God is the Complex as the Protoplast :

He is the First (not " was "), and is the Last.

(Not "will be") . . .'

God slips you. He is Undefinable.

Not good! Not wise! Not anything at all."

Isis am I, and from my life are fed

All stars and suns, all moons that wax and wane,
Create and uncreate, living and dead.

The mystery of Pain.
I am the Mother, I the silent Sea,

The Earth, its travail, its fertility.
Life, death, love, hatred, light, darkness, return to me —
To Me ! '

' The Fatal Force, vol. i, p. 143.

' Jephthah, vol. i, p. 78.

' Tannhauser, vol. i, p. 261.

* Mystpries: Lyrical and Dramatic, vol. i, p. 115.
' Tannhauser, vol. i, p. 226.

• /bid. vol. i, p. 258. ' Ibid. vol. i, p. 262.

THE NEW WINE 275

What God is in Himself the Agnostic declares is
not given man to understand, much less to discuss,
and this maxim finds full affirmation in " Ascension
Day," when Crowley writes:

I deny nothing — at the term
It is just Nothing- I affirm.^

Man is but an ephemeron :

We float upon the blue
Like sunlight specks in dew,
And like the moonlight on the lake we lie.^

Yet he rises :

Golden, the electric spark of man is drawn
Deep in the bosom of the world, to soar
New-fledged, an eagle to the dazzling dawn
With lidless eyes undazzled, to arise,
Son of the morning, . . .'

finds Freedom as his God :

And Freedom stands, re-risen from the rod,
A goodlier godhead than the broken God.*

It was in the winter of 1619 that Descartes made
the famous resolution to " take nothing for truth with-
out the clear knowledge that it is such." Thus Jove-
like he discrowned the authority of a thousand years,
and though the symbolization of his ideas was often
at variance with the logic of his facts, it is to him
alone that present-day agnosticism must look back
on as its founder. Berkeley, as we have seen, carried
the Cartesian principle to its logical result; Hume,

' The Sword of Song, vol. ii, p. 163,

" Mysteries : Lyrical and Dramatic, vol. i, p. 95.

^ The Fatal Force, vol. i, p. 145.

* Mysteries : Lyrical and Dramatic, vol. i, p. 107.

276 THE STAR IN THE WEST

on the other hand, "proved that, in a multitude of
important instances, so far from possessing * clear
knowledge,' that they may be so taken, we have none
at all ; and that our duty therefore is to remain silent,
or to express at most, suspended judgment."^

This, the mob of mankind are very loath to do, for
instead of honestly expressing nine-tenths of their
knowledge in terms of doubt, they cast the whole
onus of Absolute or Noumenal knowledge on to the
back of some aching and asinine deity.

By postulating Unknowability, which if treated as
an absolute term is also a positive one (God), Spencer
the Transfigured Realist was hoisted by that very
same petard he had himself intended to tie to the
wagging tail of the Christian Deity. Thus by render-
ing all knowledge automorphological, in order to an-
nihilate the unity of thirty-nine articles without parts
or passions, rearing himself up, he plunged down,
creating in his fall, "a footless stocking without a
leg "^-Unknowability.

In " Eleusis " Crowley illustrates this, and says:

' ' Evolution is no better than creation to explain
things, as Spencer showed."^

Huxley the sublime philosopher, the true agnostic,
the periphery of whose knowledge extended far into
those mirrored realms wherein Spencer only saw his
own distorted countenance, seeing well that Hylo-
Idealistic-Solipsism led the whole sentient creation
from sub-rational matter to rational man, was suffi-
ciently a true agnostic not to deny the possibility of
a divine Solipsism, leading rational man to a super-
rational God, but yet not sufficiently illuminated to

' Huxley's Hume. p. x. ^ Eleusis, vol. iii, p. 228.

THE NEW WINE 277

transmute "I doubt" into "I know." However,
Huxley grasped the great and grand truth that the
natural philosopher who examines worlds, suns, and
stars, is in reality only experimenting on his own
" inner consciousness," beyond which to him there is
Nothing.

These stars thou seest
Are but the figuring of thy brain. '

This Nothing, this absolute nihility, is again the
Qabalistic Zero. Huxley did not belong to that now
rapidly growing school [sic) of crapulous scientists
who inflate themselves, like the frog in the fable, with
the gases produced from an eightpenny box of chem-
icals with which they intend to solve in some dingy
attic the flashing mysteries of the spheres. The Caput
Mortuum was his playground, but the Aninta Vitae
eluded his eager grasp ; yet this greatest of modern
philosophers, curious to say, stood almost alone, on
one side growling science asserting, "There is no
Archaeus," on the other religion howling "There is!
There is ! " Yet as a positive and a negative formulate
Zero, so these twain were as one yelping pack of
jackals, who prowl by night fearing the brightness of
the day.

Huxley aptly sums up the standpoint an Agnostic
should take in the following :

If a piece of lead were to remain suspended of itself in
the air, the occurrence would be a " miracle " in the sense
of a wonderful event, indeed ; but no one trained in the
methods of science would imagine that any law of nature
was really violated thereby. He would simply set to work
to investigate the conditions under which so highly un-

Gargoyles, vol. iii, p. 89.

278 THE STAR IN THE WEST

expected an occurrence took place, and thereby enlarge
his experience, and modify his hitherto unduly narrow
conceptions of the laws of nature.^

This is the method of true science, the great white
magic of the Black Goddess :

Gape wide, O hideous mouth, and suck
This heart's blood, drain it down, expunge

This sweetening life of mire and muck !
Squeeze out my passions as a sponge,

Till nought is left of terrene wine

But somewhat deathless and divine ! '

Huxley continues : ' ' The day-fly has better grounds
for calling a thunderstorm supernatural than has man,
with his experience of an infinitesimal fraction of dura-
tion, to say that the most astonishing event that can
be imagined is beyond the scope of natural causes." '
And that there is no such thing as the violation of the
laws of nature, but merely a violation of that under-
standing which falsely interprets a "something"
which reason alone cannot grasp.

• Huxley's Hume, p. 155. " It will be said that these are
miracles, but we reply that miracles, when they are genuine,
are simply facts for science. ''

" A philosopher has declared that he would discredit universal
testimony rather than believe in the resurrection of a dead
person, but his speech was rash, for it is on the faith of universal
testimony that he believed in the impossibility of the resurrec-
tion. Supposing such an occurrence were proved, what would
follow? Must we deny evidence, or renounce reason? It would
be absurd to say so. We should simply infer that we were
wrong in supposing resurrection to be impossible."

" Ab actu ad posse valet consecutio." — E. L£vi, The Doctrine
of Transcendent Magic, pp. 121, 158; also vide p. 192.

^ Gargoyles, vol. iii, p. 98.

' Huxley's Hume, p. 156.

THE NEW WINE 279

How different is this agnosticism from the agnos-
ticism of Spencer ; which postulates as its first great
principle, the unknowability of the Absolute, of whom
we can conceive no proportion whatsoever, but whose
relationship to us becomes closer and closer as we
proceed along the way of the knowable — and perhaps
actually becomes known when we ourselves become
unknowable, i.e., pure adepts. The second great
principle is the Conservation of Matter and Energy,
or in other words the law of Cause and Effect. A
law we have gone to some length in demonstrating
to be apodictically untenable, though highly probably
d. posteriori. Crowley, like Hume and Huxley, solely
identifies it as a law based upon inference. This
sequence of events is vividly demonstrated in ' ' The
Mother's Tragedy." Cora thinks, "God hath made
smooth the road beneath the hearse of my forgetful
age." Not so however:

They know not, learn not, cannot calculate

How subtly Fate

Weaves its fine mesh, perceiving how to wait;

Or how accumulate

The trifles that shall make it master yet

Of the strong soul that bade itself forget.'

This law of Cause and Effect logically leads
us to the third great principle of both Buddhism

' The Mother's Tragedy, vol. i, pp. 156-7.

Qabalistic Dogma of Pistorius.

Factum fatum quia fatum verbum est.

A supreme reason governs all, and hence there is no fatality ;
all which is must be ; all which happens ought to take place.
An accomplished fact is irrevocable as destiny, but destiny is
the reason of the Supreme Intelligence. — The Mysteries of
Magic, p. 123.

28o THE STAR IN THE WEST

and Spencerian Agnosticism — "The absence of an
Ego."

In support of this assertion, Crowley quotes from
Huxley's " Evolution and Ethics," and considers it to
be an admirable summary of the Buddhist doctrine.^

The Ego does not exist. It is morning; I walk
down the hill to catch a train; as I walk I literally
leave shreds of myself behind me. I am no longer the
" I " of five minutes ago, fleeting I pass along life's
way. A minute gone by my footstep crushed a daisy,
there is woe in the land of flowers ; yet a few seconds
past and I slew a fly, there is weeping in the land of
insects. I speed to catch the train, I slip, and in a
dazzling flash am converted into a glutinous mass of
jelly and crushed bones. Crumpled as some much-
written palimpsest I am thrown to the basket of the
dead, a useless manuscript. When was I, "I"; in
the morning when I crushed the daisy, when I slew
the fly, or when I was converted into pulp? Which?
The Buddhist answers, "you were never 'I,'" the
Agnostic answers, " You were never ' I,' " both merely
state, — see that on the papyrus of thy life thou in-
scribest what is good, what is beautiful, for others
must read it, it is thy soul.

Change, change, no stability. The "is" is not as
the "was," and the "was" is not as the "will be";
every cause has its effect: " Freewill" is the postu-
late of Morality, " Determination" of Science. Thus
in Buddhism we find Anikka, Dukkha, and Anatta,
and in Agnosticism Change, Sorrow, and Absence of
an Ego ; and in both : That to deny all religions is a
sublime act of faith.

' The Sword of Song, Science and Buddhism, vol. ii, p. 246.

THE NEW WINE 281

The metaphysics of these verses
Is perfectly absurd. My curse is
No sooner in an iron word
I formulate my thought than I
Perceive the same to be absurd. '

And this fleeting- changeful "experience," Huxley
says, is necessarily "based on incomplete know-
ledge," and is "to be held only as grounds of more
or less justified expectation" . . . "On the other
hand, no conceivable event however extraordinary is
impossible." ^

Thus all changeability is uncertainty, from the Gods
and the Suns which we worship, to the kisses we
shower on our loved ones' lips; as Crowley sings:

Why must despair to madness drive
The myriad fools that fear to die?
God 's but a fervid phantom drawn
Out of the hasty-ordered hive
Of thoughts that battle agony
In the melancholy hours of dawn.
When vital force at lowest ebbs
Anaemic nerves weave frailest webs.^

And the five senses stand naked and shivering in the
freezing- night of doubt, the fire is dead, and on the
hearth crouch the spectral ashes no longer to flame
in the starlight.

Foolish prostitute !
You slacked your kiss upon the sodden youth
In some excess of confidence, decay
Of care to hold him — can I tell you which ?
Down goes the moon — one sees the howling bitch ! " *

' The Sword of Song, Pentecost, vol. ii, p. 170.
^ Huxley's Hume, p. 157.
' Gargoyles, vol. iii, p. 85.
* Ibid, vol. iii, p. 91.

282 THE STAR IN THE WEST

The Agnostic principles of Crowleyanity may briefly
be summed up as follows :

Believe nothing until you find it out for yourself.

Say not " I have a soul," before you _^e/ that you
have a soul.

Say not "There is a God," before you experience
that there is a God.

You can never understand until you have experi-
enced.

You can never experience until you have got beyond
reason.

Those five paths lead us to one road, the road of
" Knowledge and Doubt " ; beyond which to the inept
there is impenetrable night, and to the adept undying
brilliancy. "Know or Doubt! is the alternative of
highwayman Huxley ; ' Believe ' is not to be admitted;
this is a fundamental ; in this agnosticism can never
change ; this must ever command our moral, as our
intellectual assent." '

Thus Reason ends by whispering : " I am agnostic ;
I cannot answer yea or nay." This is the crowning
triumph of the nineteenth century! Kant has proved
beyond all doubt, that by empirical means we can
never hope to penetrate beyond the tremendous night
of Reason; then came Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel,
they, peering into the depths of the Darkness, here
and there saw some fleeting asteroid ; after them came
Huxley, who glooming into the depths, far in the
distance, saw the whirling cloud of stars, still beyond
him must we go, beyond that trembling cloud which
hovers as some tired dove on the horizon of our
minds, past nebula of stars and molten suns singing

' The Sword of Song, vol. ii, p. 208.

THE NEW WINE 283

midst new-born spheres and hoary-headed worlds,
" I would that I were the sky that I might be all eyes
to behold thee," till the stars circle about us, and the
wild comets speed by, and suns embrace suns, and
the moons melt shrieking through the firmament.
Then all powers will dissolve, and the great golden
dawn effulgent will flash through the portals of night,
standing before us bride of our desire, robed in a
million suns, the stars flaming in her hair, incarnate
symbol of perpetual youth.
So we feel with Crowley that :

Time and again, in the History of Science, a period has
arrived when, gorged with facts, she has sunk into a.
lethargfy of reflection accompanied by appalling nightmares
in the shape of impossible theories.'

And that :

History affirms that such a deadlock is invariably the
prelude to a, new enlightenment ; by such steps we have
advanced, by such we shall advance. The " horror of great
darkness" which is scepticism must ever be broken by
some heroic master soul, intolerant of the Cosmic agony. ^

The sun of true Agnosticism breaks through Buddh-
ism (vol. ii, p. 247), and now the Vega of illuminism,
the flashing star of Crowleyanity drowns the sun of
Agnosticism, and reduces the whole infinite ether to
a flaming Crown of glory. This, all yearning hearts
must hope, will be the great golden coronation of the
centuries hereafter.

Surrounded by fools on every side, we are apt as
Agnostics to consider ourselves the only torch-bearers
of truth ; and through ignorance, joining ourselves to
a particular body, hoist on high our spluttering brand

' The Sword of Song, p. 207. ^ Hid.

284 THE STAR IN THE WEST

of mundane tar, declaring we have discovered that
light which moved on the face of the waters, before
sun or moon or stars were created. We rank the
great adepts with the madmen of God, whose miracles
are mere imitations, whose powers are mere preten-
sions, and whose illumination is mere reflection ; but
what is it then these great beings imitate, pretend to,
or reflect? Here lies the dark question which no denial
can disprove, no assertion comprehend, and which
work alone through the alembic of our hearts can
reveal and accomplish.

THE ADEPTS

It is this something, this light which every Adept
sets out to discover ; for, whether in the dark night
of the neophyte, or the noonday brilliancy of the
supreme magus. Reason deserts us, and we at length
are forced to seek a diviner illumination beyond those
dark realms of rational understanding.

Crowley writes on this point, in ' ' Eleusis, " as follows :

Not while reason is, as at present, the best guide known
to men, not until humanity has developed a mental power
of an entirely different kind. For, to the philosopher, it
soon becomes apparent that reason is a weapon inadequate
to the task. Hume saw it, and became a sceptic in the
widest sense of the term. Mansel saw it and counsels us to
try Faith, as if it was not the very fact that Faith was
futile that bade us appeal to reason. Huxley saw it, and,
no remedy presenting itself but a vague faith in the pos-
sibilities of human evolution, called himself an agnostic:
Kant saw it for a moment, but it soon hid itself behind his
terminology ; Spencer saw it, and tried to gloss it over by
smooth talk, and to bury it beneath the ponderous tomes of
his unwieldy erudition,^

' Eleusis, vol. iii, p. 228.

THE NEW WINE 285

This may be further amplified by the following
quotation from Eckartshausen :

In time and space knowledg-e is but relative. Is it not
true that all which we call reality is but relative, for abso-
lute truth is not to be found in the phenomenal world. Thus
your natural reason does not possess its true essence, but
only the appearance of truth and light ; and the more the
essence of light inwardly fades, and the man confuses him-
self with this appearance, and gropes vainly after the
dazzling phantasmal images he conjures. '

This appearance of Truth is practically what the
Hindu would call " maya," in which all created beings
live. There is a way which leads beyond it, and any
man can discover it, if he be fit and willing, and this
way leads to God.

The Absolute Truth lying in the centre of mystery is like
the sun, it blinds ordinary sight, and man sees only the
shadow. The eagle alone can gaze at the dazzling light,
likewise only the prepared soul can bear its lustre. Never-
theless the great Something which is the inmost of the Holy
mysteries has never been hidden from the piercing gaze of
him who can bear the light. ^

The whole progress of the Adept is to speed out of
this changing shadow-land into the full blaze of the
sunlight; in the words of the Qabalist, "to attain
to the Crown, " and those of the Christ, ' ' To be one with
the Father. " Now a curious vista opens out before
our gaze, and it is this : A man or woman to become
an adept need neither possess great intellect, great
genius, nor great knowledge, in fact, in many cases
the more ignorant and crass have been the aspirants,
the more speedy has been their illumination (Christ
the carpenter) ; for the less have they had to conquer,
and the lower, and therefore less rational, have been

1 The Cloud upon the Sanctuary, p. 3. " Ibid. p. 30.

286 THE STAR IN THE WEST

their symbols. "Most others, especially Hinduism
and Buddhism, lose themselves in metaphysical specu-
lation only proper to those who are already Adepts. " '
Ignorance or Knowledge have nothing to do with
illumination any more than pig has to do with Chicago
pork ; yet as there are standards of knowledge, so are
there degrees of illumination; for there is not the
slightest doubt that Booth and Robert Evans stand
on a much lower footing than a St. Augustine or a
Paracelsus ; yet nevertheless, Boehme, who was only
a shoemaker, ranks with them.^ " It is no doubt
more difficult," writes Crowley, " to learn 'Paradise
Lost ' by heart than ' We are seven,' but when you
have done it, you are no better at figure skating." '
So a Boehme may rank with an Augustine, whilst an
Evans may not.

Inspiration does not enter into the understanding,
it illuminates a deeper part of the Ego, and under its
influence the imagination is diverted from the specu-
lative understanding to more active powers which

' Eleusis, vol. iii, p. 220.

' Whittling shoe soles seems at one time to have been a
special calling for mystics, besides Jacob Boehme, there was
George Fox, and John Bunyan ; also Eliphas L^vi was the son
of a shoemaker. It might be noted here that in India all
leather workers are considered unclean, and in caste rank with
sweepers and pork butchers.

' Eleusis, vol. iii, p. 228. After the colossal fable of CEdipus
we find the gracious poem of Psyche, which was certainly not
invented by Apuleius. The great magical arcanum reappears
here under the figure of a mysterious union between a god and
a weak mortal abandoned alone and naked on a rock. Psyche
niust remain in ignorance of the secret of her ideal royalty, and
if she behold her husband she must lose him. — E. L£vi, The
Doctrine of Transcendent Magic, p. 16.

THE NEW WINE 287

release the imprisoned "I." When once these powers
are released from the earthy grasp of the understand-
ing, and the Ego sloughs its outward empirical skin,
we then become mystics; nevertheless, " If any man
say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar.
For he that loveth not his brother whom he seeth,
how can he love God whom he seeth not." So the
mystic's work lies here in life, and the greatest and
most divine mystics have probably been those whose
naiveti of soul was such, that they knew not that they
were mystics, and whose illumination has become so
brilliant, that they cannot even find expression in the
most divine of symbols. Such adepts who arrive at
so exalted a plane, keep silence, as Crowley says :
"the first and last ordeals and rewards of the Adept
are comprised in the maxim ' Keep Silence ' ! " ^

Call "homo sapiens" him who thinks;
Talkers and doers — missingf links ! '

In his essay " Eleusis," Crowley suggests that the
world's history may roughly be divided into a con-
tinuous succession of periods, each embracing three
distinct cycles — of Renaissance, Decadence, and
Slime. In the first the Adepts rise as artists, philo-

1 Eleusis, vol. iii, p. 221. "To KNOW, TO DARE, TO WILL, TO
KEEP SILENT, are the four words of the magus, inscribed upon
the four symbolic forms of the Sphinx.

" To command the elements, we must have overcome their
hurricanes, their lightnings, their abysses, their tempests.

" In order to DARE we must know ; in order to WILL we must
DARE ; we must WILL to possess empire, and to reign we must
BE SILENT." — E. LSVI, The Ritual of Transcendent Magic,

PP- 3°> 19°-

^ Gargoyles, vol. iii, p. 94.

288 THE STAR IN THE WEST

sophers, and men of science, who are sooner or later
recognized as great men ; in the second the adepts
as adepts appear, but seem as fools and knaves ; and
in the third, that of Slime, vanish altogether, and are
invisible.^ Then the chain starts again. Thus Crowley
writes :

Decadence marks the period when the adepts, nearing
their earthly perfection, become true adepts, not mere men
of genius. They disappear, harvested by heaven : and per-
fect darkness (apparent death) ensues until the youthful
forerunners of the next crop beg-in to shoot in the form of
artists.^

During this period of darkness comes the swarm
of materializing and secularizing worshippers, who
perceive only the gross symbols and not the truth
that lies behind them: " The Church which begins to
exteriorise," says Crowley, "is already lost.'" And
he continues further on in the same essay :

Now when Paganism became popular, organised, state-
regulated, it ceased to be individual: that is to say, it
ceased to exist as a religion, and became a social institu-
tion little better than the Church which has replaced it.
But initiates — men who had themselves seen God face to
face, and lived — preserved the vital essence. They chose
men, they tested them; they instructed them in methods

^ Dionysius thus describes the mystical adept: " Then is he
delivered from all seeing and being seen, and passes into the
truly mystical darkness of ignorance, where he excludes all
intellectual apprehensions, and abides in the utterly impalpable
and invisible ; being wholly His who is above all, with no other
dependence, either on himself or any other ; and is made one,
as to his nobler part, with the Utterly Unknown, by the ces-
sation of all knowing ; and at the same time, in that very know-
ing nothing, he knows what transcends the mind of man." — De
MysticA TheologiA, cap. i, p. 710.

° Eleusis, vol. iii, p. 222. ' Ibid, vol. iii, p. 221,

THE NEW WINE 289

of invoking the Visible Image of the Invisible. Thus by a
living chain religion lived^n the Mysteries of Eleusis.'

Thus true religion consists in a spontaneous out-
burst of passionless illuminism, and not in the regular
ranting of the boundless buncombe of a bawdy book.

Better be a Shaker, or a camp-meeting homunculus, or
a Chatauqua gurl, or a Keswick week lunatic, or an Evan
Roberts revivalist, or even a common maniac, than a smug
Evangelical banker's clerk, with a greasy wife, and three
gifted children — to be bank clerks after him !

That is, if religion is your aim : if you are spiritually minded. '

Go out one night to a distant and lonely heath, if no moun-
tain summit is available : then at midnight repeat the Lord's
Prayer, or any invocation with which you happen to be
familiar, or one made up by yourself, or one consisting
wholly of senseless and barbarous words. Repeat it solemnly
and aloud, expectant of some great and mysterious result.

I pledge myself, if you have a spark of religion in you,
that is, if you are properly a human being, that you will (at
the very least) experience a deeper sense of spiritual com-
munion than you have ever obtained by a course of church-
going. =

The Irishman whose first question on landing at
New York was "Is there a Government in this
country?" and on being told "Yes," instantly re-
plied : " Then I'm agin it," * must have travelled many
a league along the road to adeptship, and if ten such
men be found in any State at the same time, then a
period of decadence may be said to have begun ; but
it is not every day that ten righteous men can be
found in Sodom ; for the inhabitants of that city of

' Eleusis, vol. iii, p. 225. ' Ibid.

^ Ibid. vol. iii, p. 224.
* The Sword of Song, vol. ii, p. 206.
U

290 THE STAR IN THE WEST

the plains, like those of Ephesus, traduce in every
way those who threaten their occupation. ' ' There-
fore, O Ananda, be ye lamps unto yourselves. Be ye
a refuge to yourselves. Betake yourselves to no ex-
ternal refuge. Hold fast to the truth as a lamp. Hold
fast as a refuge to the truth. Look not for refuge to
anyone besides yourselves." (Mahaparanibbana Sutta,

ii. 33-)'

YOGA

Now comes the supreme question : How is this in-
ward mystery revealed? And the answer is: In the
East by Yoga, and in the West by Magic. "Thus
East and West from A to Z agree. . . .'"' In the
East, by an entirely artificial and scientific method,
in the West by a stimulation and sudden outflowing
of the poetic faculty. The East, we may take it, is
almost entirely static; whilst the West is wholly
dynamic. Yet their methods, whatever they may be,
ultimately harmonize (as everything ultimately must
do), leading the aspirant through various stages of
illuminism, till he stands out from the illusions of his
birth, and becomes one with that higher glow of glory
in exalted states of Ecstasy or Samddhi.

Crowleyanity has now led us through the realms
of sceptical idealism, in which rationalism has been
found completely wanting as a constructive force,
and through which we have travelled with satyr and
nymph and many other profaners of the sanctuary.
And, as of old, the scented courtezans revelled in the
mysteries of Eleusis, and the vine of lacchus was

' Cited, vol. ii, p. 255.

" Pentecost, vol. ii, p. 173.

THE NEW WINE 291

trampled by Bacchic feet, so to-day we find once
again the farces of Aristophanes redacted on the
grand stage of the world on which the great actors
have played their part, and. have retired behind the
scenes. So once more, much to the joy of little
children, the little Rationalias, the little Secularias,
the harlequinade has again begun. Sinbad has sailed
away with all his treasure ; Aladdin has departed, and
has not forgotten to take with him his wonderful
lamp. No more Jinn are to be unbottled from their
sleep of a thousand years ; the moon-faced ones have
passed away, some singing, some laughing, some
weeping; and in their place have come the clowns
and pantaloons of modern thought, hurling rational
sausages at each others' heads, and waylaying un-
wary curates, foolish young women, and the inarticu-
late guardians of the peace.

We are indeed living in an approximate age, when
in proportion to the simple distance, instead of the
square of that distance, inversely our knowledge be-
comes known ; yet curious to say, as Rousseau once
said : " The choice which is opposed to Reason comes
to us from Reason. We have made the god of love
blind because he has better eyes than we have, and
sees things which we cannot perceive." ' So are we
now making the Sublime ridiculous, and like the
Bhikkhu can no longer see the "dainty lady" but in
her place "a set of bones." '^ Not until we under-
stand ourselves, shall we understand the world of
God, and not until we have replenished the lamp of
our soul with love, will it burn up into a brilliant

' J. J. Rousseau, "Eraile," i, 4, ed. Gamier, p. 230.
^ Gargoyles, vol. iii, p. 104.

292 THE STAR IN THE WEST

immortality. Our port to reach is that divinity which
abides in us, mud-bound though it be in the clay of its
surroundings, for as Lamartine said : " Humanity is as
a weaver working on the reverse of the web of Time.
One day will come when passing to the other side,
she will behold the wonder and beauty she has woven,
in the place of the loose threads and knots of the
reverse." That day God will be manifested.

The secret theurgy of the ages is neither science, nor
ethics, philosophy, nor religion ; for it is the science,
the ethics, the philosophy, the religion of all times,
and when manifest in the heart of the adept, the full
blaze of a divine glory will descend, life will be van-
quished, and the soul set free.

To attain to this freedom is the end of life ; in this
respect both yogi and mystic agree, and that every-
thing which entails the loss of freedom is sin, there-
fore change is sin and illusion, maya, and our great
object is to get beyond this changeable changeability
into an unchangeable changelessness.

The yogi proposes to himself no less a task than
to master the entire universe, and finding that the
mind has the reflexive power of looking back into its
own depths, does his utmost to develop this power
by turning the mind, as it were, by artificial means,
inside on itself, concentrating all its powers on itself,
and stopping it at every turn from wandering outside
of itself. Then the mind, slowly learning its own
nature, analyzes itself and discovers the Divinity
which is itself.

And I have ceased to think !
That is, have conquered and made still
Mind's lower powers by utter Will.'

' The Sword of Song, Pentecost, vol. ii, p. 177.

THE NEW WINE 293

To attain this end eight stages of perfection have
to be accomplished: Varna, Niyama, Asana, Prdnd-
ydma, Pratydhdra, Dhdrand, Dhydna, and Samadhi,
the last being that state of super-knowledge in which
Self and its shadow become one, an extended form of
Kant's d priori.

Existence is change, and change is sorrow, there-
fore we must overcome existence.

Existence, as we know it, spins
A fatal warp, a woof of woe.

There is no place for God or soul.
Works, hopes, prayers, sacrifices, sins
Are jokes. The cosmos happened so :
Innocent all of guide or goal.
Else, what were man's appointed term?
To feed God's friend, the coffin-worm ! '

Crowley further states in a short foreword to these
" Images of Life and Death " : " To me life and death
have most often appeared in majesty and beauty, in
solemnity and horror; in emotions, to be brief, so
great that man had no place therein. But there are
moods, in which the heights are attained indirectly,
and through man's struggle with the elemental
powers."'

Only by energy and strife

May man attain the eternal rest,
Dissolve the desperate lust of life

By infinite agony and zest.
Thus, O my Kali, I divine
The golden secret of thy shrine ! '

The strife to attain to this golden secret we have
already seen depicted in so many of Aleister Crowley's

' Gargoyles, vol. iii, p. 84.

* Jbid. ^ Ibid. vol. iii, p. 98.

294 THE STAR IN THE WEST

poems. But what is it? And Crowley at once, with
East and West, answers, "a higher state of con-
sciousness."

That a hig^her consciousness exists is certain ; that it is
unknowable is certain, . . . unless indeed, we can truly
unite it with itself.^

And that this supreme union is possible he ex-
plains :

Prevent sense-impressions from reaching the sensorium
and there will at least be a better chance of examining the
interior. You cannot easily investigfate a watch while it
is going: nor does the reflection of the sun appear in a
lake whose surface is constantly ruffled by wind and rain,
by hail and thunderbolt, by the diving of birds and the fall-
ing of rocks. ^

In fact, throughout the whole of volume ii of the
collected works runs a great river of esoteric mystic-
ism, which in the earlier works was a glittering net-
work of sparkling streams.

In "Time" we find the commandments of Yama
and Niyama mentioned, though we must never forget
that the conditions of success vary for every indi-
vidual, and that Crowley might advise one pupil to
drink more, and another to abstain. He doubts

That extreme virtue is a necessary condition for one who
is desirous of attaining this state of bliss. °

In the beginning of "Pentecost" descriptions of
Asana and Pranayama :

In strange and painful attitude,
I sat, while he was very rude.

' Time, vol. ii, p. 281.

' Ibid.

' Ibid. vol. ii, p. 276.

THE NEW WINE 295

With eyes well fixed on my proboscis,'

I soon absorbed the Yogi Gnosis.

He taught me to steer clear of vices,

The giddy waltz, the tuneful aria,

Those fatal foes of Brahma-charya;

And said, " How very mild and nice is

One's luck to lop out truth in slices,

And chance to chop up cosmic crises ! "

He taught me A, he taught me B,

He stopped my baccy and my tea.

He taught me Y, he taught me Z,

He made strange noises in my head.

He taught me that, he taught me this,

He spoke of knowledge, life and bliss.

He taught me this, he taught me that.

He grew me mangoes in his hat.

I brought him corn : he made good grist of it : —

And here, my Christian friend, 's the gist of it ! '

In "Science and Buddhism" there is a vivid de-
scription of Praty&h&ra :

The work is comparable to that of an electrician who
should sit for hours with his finger on a delicately adjusted
resistance-box, and his eye on the spot of light of a galvano-
meter, charged with the duty of keeping the spot still, at
least, that it should never move beyond <» certain number
of degrees, and of recording the more important details of
his experiment. Our work is identical in design, though
worked with subtler — if less complex — means. For the
finger on the resistance-box we substitute the Will; and
its control extends but to the Mind ; for the eye we substi-
tute the Introspective Faculty with its keen observation
of the most minute disturbance, while the spot of light
is the Consciousness itself, the central point of the gal-
vanometer scale the predetermined object, and the other
figures in the scale, other objects, connected with the

^ The monks of Mount Athos substituted, as a gazing-point,
the navel for the nose. — Vaughan, Hours with the Mystics,

P- S7-

^ The Sword of Song, Pentecost, vol. ii, p. 166.

296 THE STAR IN THE WEST

primary by order and degree, sometimes obviously, some-
times obscurely, perhaps even untraceably, so that we have
no real right to predicate their connection.'

Dhdran& is mentioned at some length in "Pente-
cost " :

Olympus in a nutshell ! I

Have a superior faculty

To reasoning, which makes absurd,

Unthinkable and wicked too,

A great deal that I know is true !

In short, the mind is capable.

Besides mere ratiocination,

Of twenty other things as well,

The first of which is concentration !

Bloom, Concentration's midnight flower !
After much practice to this end
I gain at last the long-sought power
(Which you believe you have this hour,
But certainly have not, my friend!),
Of keeping close the mind to one
Thing at a time — suppose, the Sun.
I gain this (Reverence to Ganesh'!)
And at that instant comprehend
(That past and future tenses vanish)
What Fichte comprehends. Division,
Thought, wisdom, drop away. I see
The absolute identity
Of the beholder and the vision. °

Then we come to the advanced stage known as
Dhyana. In ' ' Science and Buddhism " Crowley
states :

In a certain meditation one day I recorded :
I was (a) conscious of external things seen behind after
my nose had vanished. (J) Conscious that I was not con-
scious of these things. These (a) and (d) were simultaneous.

' Science and Buddhism, vol. ii, p. 151.
» Vol. ii, pp. 173-174.

THE NEW WINE 297

I subsequently discovered this peculiar state of con-
sciousness classified in the Abhidhamma. That it is a
contradiction in terms I am perfectly aware ; to assign any
meaning to it is frankly beyond me ; but I am as certain
that such a state once existed, as I am of anything.'

This is quite true, for on attaining to such an ad-
vanced stage of illumination, language rapidly fails
us, and we break through the dialectic veil and enter
that life which lies "behind," solely expressed by
means of symbols.

"What can I know?" asked Kant, as we have
already seen. ' ' What is Knowledge ? " asks the Yogi
or mystic, and his question is the right one of the two.

I see a cat.

Dr. Johnson says it is a cat.

Berkeley says it is a group of sensations.

Cankaracharya says it is an illusion, an incarnation, or
God, according to the hat he has got on, and is talking
through.

Spencer says it is a mode of the Unknowable.

But none of them seriously doubt the fact that I exist ;
that a cat exists ; that one sees the other. All — bar Johnson
— hint — but oh ! how dimly ! — at what I now know to be^
true? — no, not necessarily true, but nearer the truth.
Huxley goes deeper in his demolition of Descartes. With
him " I see a cat " proves " something called consciousness
exists." He denies the assertion of duality; he has no
datum to assert the denial of duality. I have.

Their (the mystics of all lands) endeavour has been to slow
the rate of change ; their methods perfect quietude of body
and mind, produced in varied, and too often vicious, ways.
Regularisation of the breathing is the best known formula.
Their results are contemptible, we must admit; but only so

' Science and Buddhism, vol. ii, p. 256.

298 THE STAR IN THE WEST

because empirical. An unwarranted reverence has overlaid
the watchfulness which science would have enjoined, and
the result is muck and misery, the wreck of a noble study.

But what is the fact upon which all agree? The one fact
whose knowledge has been since religion began the all-
sufficient passport to their doubtfully-desirable company?

This: that "I see a cat" is not only an unwarranted
assumption, but a lie; that the duality of consciousness
ceases suddenly, once the rate of change has been suffici-
ently slowed down, so that, even for a few seconds, the
relation of subject and object remains impregnable.'

This state of relationship is either a very high stage
of Dhydna or SamSdhi itself, the whole quintessence
of the five senses reflecting their full glory on the
mirror of their own quiescence : the sun raised to the
power of a quintillion flaming on the surface of an in-
finite facetless diamond.

There is a lake amid the snows
Wherein five glaciers merge and break.
Oh ! the deep brilliance of the lake !
The roar of ice that cracks and goes
Crashing within the water ! Glows
The pale pure water, shakes and slides
The glittering sun through emerald tides.
So that faint ripples of young light
Laugh on the green. Is there a night
So still and cold, a frost so chill.
That all the glaciers be still?
Yet in its peace no frost.

Arise!
Over the mountains steady stand,
O sun of glory in the skies
Alone, above, unmoving! Brand
Thy sigil, thy restless might,
The abundant imminence of light !

' Science and Buddhism, vol. ii, pp. 207-208.

THE NEW WINE 299

Ah!

O in the silence, in the dark,
In the intang-ible, unperfumed,
Ing-ust abyss, abide and marlc
The mind's magnificence assumed
In the soul's splendour! Here is peace;
Here earnest of assured release.
Here is the formless all pervading
Spirit of the World, rising, fading
Into a glory subtler still.
Here the intense abode of Will
Closes its gates, and in the hall
Is solemn sleep of festival.
Peace ! Peace ! Silence of peace !

visionless abode ! Cease ! Cease !
Through the dark veil pass on ! The veil
Is rent asunder, the stars pale,

The suns vanish, the moon drops,
The chorus of the spirit stops.
But one note swells. Mightiest souls
Of bard and music-maker, rolls
Over your loftiest crowns the wheel
Of that abiding bliss. Life flees
Down corridors of centuries
Pillar by pillar, and is lost.
Life after life in wild appeal
Cries to the master ; he remains
And thinks not.

The polluting tides
Of sense roll shoreward. Arid plains
Of wave-swept sea confront me. Nay !
Looms yet the glory through the grey,
And in the darkest hours of youth

1 yet perceive the essential truth,
Know as I know my consciousness.
That all division's hosts confess

A master, for I know and see

The absolute identity

Of the beholder and the vision. '

The Sword of Song, Pentecost, vol. i, pp. 175-176.

300 THE STAR IN THE WEST

In a note to "Time," Dr. Maudsley explains the
state of ecstasy or Samd.dhi as follows :

The "ecstasy," if attained, signifies such a "standing-
out," iK-araeiQ, quasi-spasmodic, of a special tract of the
brain as, if persisted in, involves the risk of a permanent
loss of power, almost in the end a paralysis of the other
tracts. Like other bad habits it grows by what it feeds
on, and may put the fine and complex co-ordinated ma-
chinery quite out of gear. The ecstatic attains an illumi-
nation (so-called) at the expense of sober reason and solid
judgement.'

Crowley's answer to this is :

Mysticus would not, I think, wish to contest this view,
but rather would arg^e that if this be the case, it is at least
a choice between two evils. Sober reason and solid judge-
ment offer no prize more desirable than death after a
number of years, less or greater, while ecstasy can, if the
facts stated in the Dialogue are accepted, give the joys of
all these years in a moment.

R6c6jac says concerning this state :

When the will succeeds in gaining admission to the ima-
gination, and the attention is fixed upon a moral object,
such a case of mono-ideism becomes the most noble of
hallucinations. The nature of the facts in this case admits
tx prolonged attention, for the moral object, far from being
exhausted like objects of sense in one single intuition, ex-
tends and increases the longer it is dwelt on. Such an object
will express itself in the mind which is generous to give it
persistent attention, under symbols which become more and
more intense until the soul, all absorbed in them, is sub-
limely hallucinated, and returns to itself full of eloquence,
enthusiasm, and courage. '

Thus Crowley again writes of this exalted state :

' Time, vol. ii, pp. 280-281.

' The Bases of the Mystic Knowledge, p. 249.

And,

THE NEW WINE 301

Let human thought itself expand —

Bright Sun of Knowledge, in me rise !

Lead me to those exalted skies

To live and love and understand !

Paying no price, accepting nought —

The Giver and the Gift are one

With the Receiver — O thou Sun

Of thought, of bliss transcending thought,

Rise where division dies ! Absorb

In glory of the glowing orb

Self and its shadow ! ^

Within the charmed space is nought
Possible unto thought.

There in their equilibrium

They float — how still, how numb !

There must they rest, there will they stay
Innocent of the judgement day.

Remote from cause, effect retires.
Act slays its dams and sires.

There is no hill, there is no pit.
They have no mark to hit.

It is enough. Closed is the sphere.
There is no more to hear.

They perish not ; they do not thrive.
They are at rest, alive.^

^ The Sword of Song, Pentecost, vol. ii, p. 183.

' Gargoyles, vol. iii, p. 104.

" Ecstacy or vision begins when thought ceases, to our con-
sciousness, to proceed from ourselves. It differs from dreaming,
because the subject is awake. It differs from hallucination, be-
cause there is no organic disturbance : it is, or claims to be, a
temporary enhancement, not a partial disintegration, of the
mental faculties. Lastly, it differs from poetical inspiration,
because the imagination is passive." — W. R. Inge, Christian
Mysticism, p. 14.

302 THE STAR IN THE WEST

MYSTICISM'

This is "the peace which passeth all understand-
ing," a conscious communion with the Absolute by
paths which lie beyond the dialectical ; when the con-
sciousness is full of God and is carried outside itself
by a sublime alienation which cannot be made intel-
ligible in words; and even if we could do so, we should
assimilate to our minds the very qualities which con-
stitute our minds, concerning which it is equally a lie
to exclaim. Yea or Nay ! There is no equivalence of
motion in Samddhi, Sarnddhi being beyond motion, a
perfect equilibrium. Yea and Nay are extensions in
maya, and can give no true perception of Samadhi to
the inquirer, beyond a nebulous symbolization, in
which Samidhi can alone be ill clad, and which word-
rags are by the ignorant so often mistaken for the
perfect conception itself.

To remain before its inquirers silent, as Christ
before his judges, is the only possible status regaM-
ing Samddhi compatible with the Truth. Samadhi is
the engineer who manipulates the engine. If you wish
to discover how that engine is worked, go to him
and not to the (ir)rational cogs, levers, and wheels;
and as to explain the engineer in terms of his engine
is to sin against the Holy Ghost, so to express in
definite terms, outside symbolization, the state of
Samddhi which is inexpressible — is also to sin

^ The word Mystery comes from the Greek Mtiimjpia, a word
ultimately derived from the root Mv (MO) a sound produced by
the opening of closed lips. It may be noted here that OM the
sacred utterance of India is pronounced by exactly opposite
methods.

THE NEW WINE 303

against the Word ; for Samddhi surpasses all rational
quantities including Egotism and Altruism, Time and
Space. Passing to that state beyond progress, which
is pure freedom and divine Will, man reaches the
stage when he ceases to think empirically under
the schemata of Time and Space. The mind at such
moments reaches heights wherein another light suc-
ceeds to the light of experience; there is a mental
" whirl " which, though irrational to pure reason, has
an incalculable value, probably depending on certain
higher laws unknown to the rational world. When
the soul has reached this point, law, in the rational
sense of the term, has ceased to have any existence,
and it henceforth enters into direct communion with
the Good; which is its own law.

Thus when we have raised our hearts to the n*
power, we become as Gods knowing good and evil ;
and if this raising of the heart, which Crowley so
brilliantly sets forth throughout his works, can in any
way lead a man into a nobler and higher insight of
himself, no one can ever doubt then that it is right for
him to so raise it.

We have already seen from Dr. Maudsley what
dangers have to be expected by those who chose this
hill-top track to follow. Others from a similar point
of vantage attack it as being pure autohypnosis and
nothing else. But curious to say, if such be the case
why is it that the greatest sages of all times have been
able to attract within their focus so many hundreds
of millions of rational beings? they themselves being
only irrational and pathological mystagogues. If such
men as Krishna, Mahomet, St. Augustine, Moses,
Orpheus, Pythagoras, Buddha, Plato, Jesus, and a
host of equal and lesser names, owed their power to

304 THE STAR IN THE WEST

self-hypnosis, then indeed self-hypnosis is the key
which in this world will unlock the fast closed corridor
of its mysteries.

Crowley strongly attacks this kitchen-knavery:

You weary me with proof enough

That all this meditation stuff

Is self-hypnosis. Be it so !

Do you suppose I did not know?

Still, to be accurate, I fear

The symptoms are entirely strange.

If I were hard, I'd make it clear

That criticism must arrange

An explanation different

For this particular event.

Surely, your best work always finds

Itself sole object of the mind's

In vain you ply the brush, distracted

By something you have heard or acted.

Expect some tedious visitor —

Your eye runs furtive to the door ;

Your hand refuses to obey ;

You throw the useless brush away.

I think I hear the Word you say ! '

Others attain tp a certain degree of illumination,
and then stumble, seeking such occult powers as
clairvoyance and clairaudience :

Received the gift — the Holy Ghost ;
Such gift implying, as I goiess.
This very super-consciousness.
Miracles follow as a dower ;
But ah ! They used the fatal power
And lost the Spirit in the act.'

' The Sword of Song, Pentecost, vol. ii, pp. 178, 179.

I am ; and by my fancy : if my reason

Will thereto be obedient, I have reason ;

If not, my senses' better pleased with madness

Do bid it welcome. — Winter's Tale.
" The Sword of Song, Pentecost, vol, ii, p. 182.

THE NEW WINE 305

Whilst others not attaining, attempt a short cut by the
means of such drugs as opium and hasheesh, the
latter of which is most powerful in producing a state
of pseudo-Samddhi.

To make me as one dead :
To loose the girders of the soul, and gain
Breathing and life for the Intelligible ;
Find death, yet find it living.'

In the midst of my complicated hallucination, I could
perceive I had a dual existence. One portion of me was
whirled unresistingly along the track of this tremendous
experience, and the other sat looking down from a height
upon its double, observing reassuring, and serenely weigh-
ing all the phenomena.^

Probably Samddhi itself acts somewhat like this.
But hasheesh produces at times under certain con-
ditions severe suffering, and the yogi does not undergo
such, for he leaves it in his wake. Hasheesh may in
some way be the loosener of the girders of the soul,'
but this is all. Huxley says : ' ' The influence of diet on
dreams ; of stimulants upon the fulness and the velocity
of the stream of thought ; the delirious phantoms gene-
rated by disease, by hashish, or by alcohol ; will occur
to everyone as examples of the marvellous sensitive-
ness of the apparatus of ideation to purely physical
influences."*

Not by the pipings of a bird

In skies of blue on fields of gold.

' Tannhauser, vol. i, p. 256.
^ The Hasheesh Eater, pp. 23-86.

' The girders of the soul which give her breathing are easy
to be loosed. — Chaldean Oracles, Psell. 32, Pleth. 8.
* Huxley's Hume, p. 106.

X

3o6 THE STAR IN THE WEST

But by a fierce and loathly word

The abomination must be told.
The holy work must twist its spell

From hemp of madness, grown in hell.!

Others again do not possess the stability of mind,
the natural health and strength so necessary in this
severe mental struggle, and as Ribot says : " It is all
confined to an alienation, in the etymological sense,
of certain states of consciousness which the ego does
not consider as its own, but which it objectivates,
and finally, by placing it outside itself, ends by attri-
buting an actual existence independent of its own.'"'
Others attain but a glimpse. Maimonides long ago
noticed :

Learn that Prophecy is an emanation from God which
flows, through the intermediary of the active Intellect, upon
the rational Faculty first, and then upon the imaginative
Faculty ; it is the highest degree of a man, and the term of
perfection to which the species may aspire ; and this state
is the highest perfection of the imaginative Faculty. . . .
If the emanation flows into the imaginative Faculty only,
and if the rational Faculty remains behind, either on
account of original structure, or from disuse, then is consti-
tuted the class of men called men of the State, diviners.
There come to men of this class, even when they are awake,
wonderful visions . . . similar to prophetic visions. . . .
They delight much in them, believing they have acquired
all sciences without study. ^

But all those who really do attain, attain, and re-
main silent.

The "Hindu practice," says Mysticus in "Time,"

Gargoyles, vol. iii, p. 98.

Les Maladies de la Personality, p. no.

Guide for the Perplexed, chap. 36, 37.

THE NEW WINE 307

"bears out Western speculation, whether we take
the shadowy idealism of Berkeley, or the self-refuted
Monism of Haeckel. All these men got our results,
and interpreted them in the partial light of their varied
intellect, their diverse surroundings and education.
But the result is the same physiological phenomenon,
from Plato and Christ to Spinoza and ^ankaracharya,
from Augustine and Abelard, Boehme and Weigel in
their Christian communities to Trismegistus and
Porphyry, Mohammed and Paracelsus in their mystic
palaces of Wisdom, the doctrine is essentially one:
and its essence is that existence is one. But to my
experience it is certain that in Dhyana the Ego is
rejected." '

This is absolutely true of Berkeley when in the Dia-
logues he writes :

To know every thing knowable is certainly a perfection ;
but to endure, or suffer, or feel anything- by sense, is an
imperfection. The former, I say, agrees to God, but not
the latter. God knows or hath ideas; but the ideas are
not conveyed to Him by sense as ours are. . . ."

God to him is a mahayogi.

It is absolutely true of Hume, but Hume, studiously
avoiding the word God, could find no helpmeet to fill
his place :

For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I
call myself, I always stumble on some particular percep-
tion or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred,
pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time
without a perception, and never can observe anything but
the perception.^

' Time, vol. ii, p. 275. ^ Three Dialogues, p. 106.

' Cited in Huxley's Hume, p. 195,

3o8 THE STAR IN THE WEST

We only feel the event, namely, the existence of an idea,
consequent to the command of the will : But the manner,
in which this operation is performed, the power by which
it is produced, is entirely beyond our comprehension . . .
The command of the mind over itself is limited, as well as its
command over the body ; ^ and these limits are not known
by reason, or any acquaintance with the nature of cause
and effect, but only by experience and observation, as in
all other natural events and in the operation of external
objects. Our authority over our sentiments is much weaker
than over our ideas ; and even the latter authority is cir-
cumscribed within very narrow boundaries. Will any one
pretend to assign the ultimate reason of these boundaries,
or show why the power is deficient in one case and not in
another?

. . . Can we give any reason for these variations, except
experience? Where then is the power, of which we pre-
tend to be conscious ? Is there not here, either in a spiritual
or material substance, or both, some secret mechanism or
structure of parts, upon which the effect depends, and
which, being entirely unknown to us, renders the power or
energy of the will equally unknown and incomprehensible?

. . . We are ignorant, it is true, of the manner in which
bodies operate on each other: Their force or energy is
entirely incomprehensible : But are we not equally ignorant
of the manner or force by which a mind, even the supreme
mind, operates either on itself or on body? Whence, I
beseech you, do we acquire any idea of it? We have no
sentiment or consciousness of this power in ourselves. We
have no idea of the Supreme Being, but what we learn from
reflection on our own faculties.^

^ Hume, " An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding.''
" We are not able to move all the organs of the body with a
like authority, though we cannot assign any reason besides
experience, for so remarkable a difference between one and the
other" (p. 67).

This is possible by Hatha Yoga. And some yogis have
become so perfect in the control of their various organs that
they have been able to stop the heart beating at will, etc.

' An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, pp. 70,
75-

THE NEW WINE 309

Hume is ignorant of the Supreme Being, yet his
ignorance is so naive, that he all but lifted the veil of
Isis. His " Ignorance" is in every way equivalent to
Berkeley's "God."

It is absolutely true of Kant, who set himself the
question, "Must we believe that Mysticism is like
some vast ocean, the empire of illusion? " ^ And then
again and again answered in the negative.

He proposed time after time that Reason be its
own end, founded upon Right and Duty, and in the
Freedom of the "Person," the moral sublimity of
"Duty":

It is not so much because it is subject to the moral law
that the person has sublimity, but because it gives that
law to itself, and is not subject to it on any other condi-
tion.^

Expressing himself with regard to the free-being,
Kant says: "In him no act would be born, and no
act would perish." '

In other words the "free-being" is a "yogi" pure
and simple.

Kant's h priori takes the place of Hume's " Ignor-
ance," which we have seen was none other than
Berkeley's "God."

It is absolutely true of Huxley, who was as astute
a thinker as Hume :

The succession of mental
states in ideation is not for-
tuitous. . . ■

Thus the idea of the word
horse presented itself to my

' Critique of Pure Reason, i, p. 304.

^ The Bases of Morals, p. 87.

^ Critique of Pure Reason, p. 140.

3IO

THE STAR IN THE WEST

mind, and was followed in
quick succession by the idea
of four legs, hoofs, teeth, rider,
saddle, racing, cheating; all
of which ideas are connected
in my experience with the im-
pression, or the idea, of a
horse and with one another,
by the relations of contiguity
and succession (a). No great
attention to what passes in
the mind is needful to prove
that our trains of thought are
neither to be arrested,nor even
permanently controlled, by our
desires or emotions. Never-
theless, they are largely influ-
enced by them. In the pres-
ence of a strong desire, or
emotion, the stream of thought
no longer flows on in a straight
course, but seems, as it were,
to eddy round the idea of that
which is the object of the emo-
tion. Every one who has
" eaten his bread in sorrow,"
knows how strangely the cur-
rent of ideas whirls about the
conception of the object of re-
gret or remorse as a centre ;
every now and then, indeed,
breaking away into the new
tracts suggested by passing
associations (b), but still re-
turning to the central thought.
Few can have been so happy
as to have escaped the social
bore, whose pet notion is cer-
tain to crop up whatever topic
is started ; while the fixed idea
of the monomaniac (c) is but
the extreme form of the same
phenomenon.

(a) Yoga teaches that by
concentrating the whole mind
upon " horse " these ideas will
be withheld, and the ultimate
state arrived at will be
"horse" pure and simple (ec-
stasy).

[But this theory involves
Scholastic-Realism ; like all
others, it is a false reflection
oftheL.V.X.)

(b) This breaking
Yoga prevents.

away

(c) Conscious or sub-con-
scious, but not supercon-
scious.

THE NEW WINE

311

And as, on the one hand, it
is so hard to drive away the
thought we would fain be
rid of; so, upon the other,
the pleasant imaginations
which we would so gladly
retain are, sooner or later,
jostled away by the crowd of
claimants for birth (d) into the
world of consciousness; which
hover as a sort of psychical
possibilities, or inverse ghosts
the bodily presentments of
spiritual phenomena to be, in
the limbo of the brain. To
that form of desire which is
called "attention," the train
of thought, held fast, for a
time, in the desired direction,
seems ever striving to get on
to another line(e), and the
junctions and sidings are so
multitudinous.^

(d) This birth is prevented
by Yoga.

(e) This
Yoga.

is overcome by

Huxley, like Hume, diagnosed with an almost in-
credible minuteness all the symptoms of this mental
unstability, but could not in all the wonders of their
laboratories, and in all the wisdom of their pharma-
copoeia, discover a single or certain cure; and yet,
strange to say, it is within the grasp of all from the
most ignorant clodhopper to the most sapient sage.

Now turning back from the present day, we shall
find that amongst those, whom we may call the divine
philosophers, those in the West have in their illumina-
tion triumphed over those in the East. And as the
spontaneous flashing of the heavens is a grander sight
than the watching of an artificial thunderstorm pro-

' Huxley's Hume, p. 107.

312 THE STAR IN THE WEST

duced in a halfpenny test tube ; so in the West,
though the state arrived at was one similar to that
worked out on Eastern principles, it was intensely
more regal and majestic ; for whilst the rishi sat in a
howling- jungle, contemplating the tip of his nose, the
mystic philosopher was groping in the charnel-house
of death, midst drear effigies of the living, and dread
symbols of the dead, and lit the same triple flame of
glory, losing himself in that poetic vision of rapture,
so entirely unknown in the prosaic East. And curious
to say, that while the East was applying mechanical
means to attain a divine illumination, the West
arrived at a similar position on the circumference of
eternity, by a diametrically opposite road; applying
the whole of her artificial faculties to a perfecting of
her material needs — hence the growing triumphs of
the West. . . . "And Isaiah the prophet cried unto
the Lord : and he brought the shadow ten degrees
backward, by which it had gone down in the dial of
Ahaz " (2 Kings, 20).

All the world round the key which opens the treasure-
house is Ecstasy.

Myself being idle for an hour
I dare one thing- to speculate :

Namely, that life hath cusps yet higher
On this our curve : a prize, a power
Lies in our grasp : unthinking Fate
Shall build a brain to nestle nigher
Under the ultimate Truth: I burn
To live that later lives may learn.

Wisdom and Love, intenser glovsf !

Beauty and strength, increase and burn
Be brothers to the law of life !
Things as they are — their nature know !

THE NEW WINE 313

Act ! Nor for faith nor folly turn !

The hour is nigh when man and wife,
Knowing, shall worship face to face,
Beget and bear the royal race.'

This is the divine union of the active ♦ with the
passive niH formulating Tetragrammaton, and of the
tJ' descending upon the miT formulating Christ.^ It
is the old story of D^vaki or of Mary, in which the
aspirant falling into an ecstatic state, is visited by
the divine essence ; in the one case under the form of
Mahad^va, in the other under that of the Holy Spirit ;
and losing consciousness of all worldliness, in a
boundless bliss the divine child is conceived.

So has it been with all those who have realized their
divine self. St. Augustine symbolizes it under a divine
act of copulation.^

What is it, then, that I love when I love my God? What
is he whom my soul feels above itself? I have tried to grasp
it in my own intelligence, above all images of things, but at
the moment when I reach that seat of being I cannot fix
my gaze, and I fall back helpless into the common thoughts.
I have carried away nothing from this vision but a memory
full of love, and as it were a regretful longing for things
whose perfume is felt but which are out of reach. What is
it, then, that I love, O my God when I love you? It is not

' Gargoyles, vol. iii, pp. 85, 86.

- Similarly with one voice Eckart and Tauler, Ruysbroek and
Suso exclaim: "Arise, O man! realize the end of thy being:
make room for God within thy soul, that he may bring forth his
Son within thee." — Vaughan, Hours -with the Mystics, p. 300.

' Curious to say in the case of women (e.g., Schwester Katrei
and Nun Gertrude), illumination and ecstasy at once symbolize
themselves under the forms of neurosis, as in the East generally
the illuminati symbolize divine union under the grossest forms
of sexual pathology. The Christian saints (celibates), also in-
dulged in the same system of symbolization.

314 THE STAR IN THE WEST

beauty of bodies, nor the glory which passes, nor the light
which our eyes love j it is not the varied harmony of sweet
songs, nor the aroma of perfumes and sweet flowers, nor
the voluptuous joys of carnal embraces. No, it is none of
these that I love when I love my God j and yet in this love
I find a light, an inner voice, a perfume, a savour, an em-
brace of a kind which does not leave the inmost of myself.
There in the depths of the soul glows something which is
not in space, there a word is heard which has no syllables :
thence there breathes a perfume which no breezes waft
away: there food is always savoured and never eaten:
there are embraces which never ask to end . . . Some-
times, O God, you create a state of soul in me so extra-
ordinary, and you fill me with so intimate a joy, that, if it
lasted, all life would be different . . . Who shall under-
stand, who shall express God? What is it that comes thus
by moments to shine into the eyes of my soul and make my
heart beat with fear and love? It is something quite other
than myself, and for this reason I am frozen with terror ; it
is something identical with myself, and therefore I am
kindled with love.^

Similarly John Tauler writes :

The more the Bridegroom loves the Bride, the more
bitter will be the cup he gives her to drink. "The cup is
that she is to cease from all her own thoughts . . . for she
can take pleasure in nothing that is not her own." She
must be made like the Bridegroom, and humbly submit to
the process, and joy in suffering for his sake, until she " is
wholly purified from all faults and stain of sin, and become
perfectly fair and unspotted." Her wedding gift is "The
Holy Ghost. He sheds forth upon the Bride the torrent of
divine love . . . insomuch that the Bride loseth herself and
is intoxicated with love, so that she forgets herself, and all
creatures in time or eternity together with herself. . . .
The joy that the Bride hath with the Bridegroom is so vast
that no senses or reason can apprehend or attain unto it." ^

' St. Augustine, Confessions, vii, ix, x.
'' John Tauler, by W. P. Swainson, p. 13.

THE NEW WINE 315

These two men had glimpses into total conscious-
ness, of which clear consciousness, as Ribot says, is
but a small portion, just as distinct vision is but a
small portion of total vision.'

The mystic, as the yogi, sets out to know the un-
knowable, and as "it is just as grave an illusion to
attribute morality to a stone as it is to think to find
the supernatural in the world of phenomena, " " so in
the inmost depths of the ego alone, itself unthinkable,
lies the source of all mystic experience. " I live, yet
not I, but God in me." This is the suspense of Job,
the sleep of Solomon, the silence of St. John, arrived
at by fixing the mind upon one single object of
thought, so that the treasures of representation
which lie dormant in the memory, flow towards that
one object and overwhelm and engulf it in a divine
glory, as Eckartshausen says: "With, however, the
development of the new organ, . . . the curtain is all
at once raised, the impenetrable veil is torn away, and
the cloud before the Sanctuary lifts, a new world
suddenly exists for us, scales fall from our eyes, and
we are at once transported from the phenomenal
world to the region of truth. '

When this cloud has been lifted : ' ' Eloquence,
poetic genius, and every faculty transcending human
mediocrity, all represent under diff"erent names that
destructive, tyrannical power which brings everything
under subjection and which does not permit the re-
ception of ideas except in one single direction,"* are

' Vide note Science and Buddhism, vol. ii, p. 258.
■^ The Bases of the Mystic Knowledge, p. 64.
^ The Cloud upon the Sanctuary, p. 12.
'- Ribot, The Psychology of Attention.

3i6 THE STAR IN THE WEST

exalted in one single mono-ideism and the result is a
very high state of contentment.

"And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all
thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy
mind, and with all thy strength : this is the first com-
mandment," to all who would arrive at their true
state of " Self-hood." God ^ here represents any one
object, for in the end all objects are the same. I look
at a bug ^ and my five senses tell me it is flat, of a
certain odour, brown, etc., etc.; only phenomena
which I cannot get behind ; the mirror of my senses
is defective, so I proceed to try one of a more perfect
make — the ' ' superconscious " ' — then I look again : the
insect has changed, is changing, it is no more a bug,
but a bogey, fire surrounds it, it is Lucifer, prince of
the Bottomless Pit, now a great calm, and the fumes
of Hell part, and the winds roar, and the earth
quakes: "How art thou fallen from Heaven, O
Lucifer, son of the morning, how art thou cut down
to the ground, which didst weaken the nations."
" Howl, fir tree," for the cedar is fallen; because the
mighty are spoiled : howl, O ye oaks of Bashan ; for
the frost of the vintage is come down." And Lo!
There is a voice of the howling of shepherds — or a
voice of the roaring of young lions — or a burning

' Deus est sphsera intelligibilis, cujus centrum est ubique et
circumferentia nusquam. — St. JBonaventura.

' Bug has the same etymology as bogey, bogle, bog^s, which
is derived from Welsh bwg, a hobgoblin, a spectre, a spirit.
' Man! wouldst thou look on God, in heaven or while yet
here,
Thy heart must first of all become a mirror clear.

Angelus Silesius, The Cherubic Wanderer.

THE NEW WINE 317

bush— or a flaming chariot— or a still small voice,
and joining myself to God I become one spirit with
him. As :

night!

Fade, love ! Fade, light !

1 pass beyond Life's law.

I melt as snow ; as ice 1 thaw ;

As mist I dissipate : I am borne, I draw

Through chasms on the mountains : stormy gusts

Of ancient sorrows and forgotten lusts

Bear me along: they touch me not: I waste.

The memory of long lives interlaced

Fades in my fading. I disintegrate

Fall into black oblivion of Fate.

My being divides. I have forgot my name.

I am blown out as a thin subtle flame,

I am no more.'

And

Nor shall the mind revoke at ease
These myriad cressets from the sun ;

Constrained in sober destinies

Thought's river shall its ripples run
Into the one, the one, the one, the one.^

' Orpheus, vol. iii, p. 213.

" Gargoyles, vol. iii, p. 97. I may here point out that not
only in their Sapphic brilliance, but also in their mirrored
mysticism, so many of Crowley's poems are akin to the
esoteric teaching of the Sufi poets of Persia, such as Jelaladdin
and Jami. A very beautiful parable of Jelaladdin runs as
follows :

One knocked at the Beloved's Door; and a Voice asked
from within, "Who is there?" and he answered, "It is I."
Then the Voice said, "This House will not hold Me and Thee."
And the Door vvas not opened. Then went the Lover into the
Desert, and fasted and prayed in Solitude. And after a year he
returned, and knocked again at the Door. And again the voice
asked, "Who is there?" and he said, " It is Thyself," and the

3i8 THE STAR IN THE WEST

And again in the Epilogue to vol. ii.

Consciousness and sense to shatter, ruin si^ht and form and

name!
Shatter, lake-reflected spectre ; like, rise up in mist to sun ;
Sun, dissolve in showers of nectar, and the Master's work is

done.
Nectar perfume gently stealing, masterful and sweet and

strong.
Cleanse the world with light of healing in the ancient House of

Wrong !
Free a million million mortals on the wheel of being tossed !
Open wide the mystic portals, and be altogether lost ! ^

The ecstasy of the saints and mystics, is, this enter-
ing into the kingdom of God which is within them.'
Hugo de Saint- Victor says: "The soul, dead to the
world and to itself, sleeps in bliss, and yields itself
utterly to the kisses of the spouse, in absolute repose

Door was opened to him. — Cited in E. Fitzgerald's Saldmdn
and AbsAI.
As do the following lines of Jdmi :

Gaze, till Gazing out of Gazing

Grew a being Her I gaze on.

She and I no more, but in One

Undivided Being blended.

All that is not one must ever

Suffer with the Wound of Absence ;

And whoever in Love's City

Enters, finds but Room for ONE,

And but in oneness Union.

And those of Feridoddin Attar :

Joy ! joy 1 no mortal thought can fathom me.
I am the merchant and the pearl at once.
Lo, time and space lie crouching at my feet.
Joy ! joy ! when I would revel in a rapture,
I plunge into myself and all things know.

' Epilogue, vol. ii, p. 283.
' I. N. R. I.

THE NEW WINE 319

of the senses." St. Bonaventura calls this mystic
identification synderesis, and describes it as "the
joy of being uplifted to a super-intellectual love."
St. Theresa, that in the ecstatic state: "the soul no
longer knows what it is doing . . . whether it speaks
or is silent : it is a blissful extravagance ... I have
often been carried away by it . . . there is such per-
fection of joy that soul and body cannot express it . . .
if they could the perfect union of all the powers would
be at an end."

So Crowley finely describes :

Death from the universal force

Means to the forceless universe
Birth. I accept the furious course,
M Invoke the all-embracing' curse.
Blessing and peace beyond may lie
When I annihilate the "I."

Therefore, O holy mother, gnash

Thy teeth upon my willing flesh !
Thy chain of skulls wild music clash !

Thy bosom bruise my own afresh,
Sri Maharani ! draw my breath
Into the hollow lungs of death !

There is no light, nor any motion.

There is no mass, nor any sound.
Still, in the lampless heart of ocean.

Fasten me down and hold me drowned
Within thy womb, within thy thought,
Where there is nought — where there is nought ! '

"Is there a faculty of perception?" asks St. Au-

Gargoyles, vol. iii, p. 99.

And yet what bliss,
When, dying in the darkness of God's light.
The soul can pierce these blinding webs of nature

320 THE STAR IN THE WEST

gustine, " independent of the senses, which, acting
by means of an internal organ, is enabled to give a
completer knowledge than ordinary experience?"
Crowleyanity, once and for all, answers: Yes! and
this faculty becomes active during the ecstatic state,
under the illumination of which mental representa-
tions become more stripped of empirical conditions,
and in an inverse proportion to which, as the mind
withdraws into itself the consciousness is wiped out.

... its unextended source,
Became the magic utterance that makes Me,
Dissolving self into the starless sea.^

CEREMONIAL MAGIC

We have already pointed out some of the reasons
which rendered the illumination of the West so much
more poetic in nature than that attained by the East.
We will now show the chief means which were em-
ployed by the adepts of the West in gaining this
end.

Though, as it would be only natural to expect, the
Christian Church strongly repudiated the idea of con-
nection between her Ceremonial practices and those

And float up to the nothing, which is all things —
The ground of being, where self-forgetful silence,
To emptiness, — emptiness fulness, — fulness God, —
Till we touch Him, and, like a snow-flake, melt
Upon his lig'ht-sphere's keen circumference !

The Saint's Tragedy,
Rosa Mundi, vol. iii, p. 52.

THE NEW WINE 321

of Magic/ for she has always denied relationship to
those who live outside the brothel, the asylum, and
the jail ; and further, in this case, burnt and destroyed
countless thousands of innocent and erudite persons
on the authority of a divine book she had rendered
obscene by her whorish thumbmarks; nevertheless,
in spite of her Lodges and her logic, the greatest of
her sons and daughters, as we have already seen,
were mystics and magicians pure and simple ; this no
doubt accounts for the comparative safety and dignity
with which the early fathers travelled in the East,
and the greatest of her ceremonies were entirely of a
magical nature. I defy any one to find any essential
difference between the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ig-
natius and the practices of Raja Yoga; space here
does not permit me to draw parallels, though I have
collected a considerable number. And as with Igna-
tius, so with other true saints of the Church,' and
so also with the countless magical ceremonies which
have tinted the atmosphere of the West : they are all

' This term must not be confounded with that applied to
Theobald's toy-shop, or to such jugglery as performed by
Maskelyne and CoUey.

' A good example is that of Hugo de St. Victor. He made
a three-fold division, the lowest being Cogitatio, the next Medi-
tatio, and the last and highest, Contemplatio.

On a similar basis Richard de St. Victor erected six stages
of contemplation :

1. In imaginatione secundum solara imaginationem.

2. In imaginatione secundum rationera.

3. In ratione secundum imaginationem,

4. In ratione secundum rationem.

5. Supra rationem sed non praeter rationera.

6. Supra rationem videtur esse praeter rationem.

Y

322 THE STAR IN THE WEST

Nevertheless, though at heart one, many extraneous
differences do exist, and it behoves any true searcher
after Truth to discover for himself the straightest road
towards his ultimate home which he long ago first
left ; to ask help of none, to live alone, as he will have
to die alone, to heed no man, to work out his own
salvation, to see that his staff is stout, and that his
lamp burns brightly, lest he fall into that great
slough of rational dung-wallowing which besets his
path. To voyage like our father Ambrose through
thunder and lightning, past the sun, and the moon,
and the stars, as Crowley most curiously depicts in
" Ambrosii Magi Hortus Rosarum,"^ that mysteri-
ously symbolic progress through the Tarot, the ten
numbers and the twenty-two letters.

When along the shores of the ^gean sea a mys-
terious voice proclaimed: "Great Pan is dead!"
Christianity was born; and like all the other great
truths, it contained a great lie: Pan was not dead,
but he was snoring in that drunken night which
cloaked the debaucheries of the classic day, and as
the night grew darker, and the dismal vapours of the
middle ages rolled on, blotting out one by one the
remaining stars of that past wonder which was Rome,
great Pan stirred himself, and awoke. But the crystal
wine of lacchus had long since soured in the thunders
of those dark days, yet, with death-pale lips, he drank
the blood-red wine of witchcraft. "Hark! the cock
crows ! Farewell till to-morrow, to-morrow night ! A

' Ambrosii Magi Hortus Rosarum, vol. ii, p. 212. I do not
hesitate to add here that had this extraordinary Essay been
written in the days of Albertus Magnus, it would now be con-
sidered one of the most important and curious of magical
works; many religions have been founded on less.

THE NEW WINE 323

lingering farewell, and kisses upon kisses ! " . . .
"Let the sparks fly upward, and the embers glow!
We will back to our old Gods again." ^

There is an idol in my house

By whom the sandal always steams.

Alone, I make a black carouse
With her to dominate my dreams.

With skulls and knives she keeps control

(O Mother Kali!) of my soul.""

Crowley's interpretation of Ceremonial Magic, the
getting back to the old gods, so to say, is lucidly
described, under the terms of a rational system, in his
introduction to the " Goetia " of King Solomon. It is
as follows :

I am not concerned to deny the objective reality of all
"magical" phenomena; if they are illusions, they are at
least as real as many unquestioned facts of daily life ; and,
if we follow Herbert Spencer, they are at least evidence of
some cause.

Now, this fact is our base. What is the cause of my
illusion of seeing a spirit in the triangle of Art?

Every smatterer, every expert in psychology, will answer
" That cause lies in your brain."

English children are taught (pace the Education Act)
that the Universe lies in infinite Space; Hindu children,
in the Akisa, which is the same thing.

Those Europeans who go a little deeper learn from
Fichte, that the phenomenal Universe is the creation of
the Ego; Hindus, or Europeans studying under Hindu
Gurus, are told, that by Akisa is meant the Chitakisa.
The Chitakisa is situated in the "Third Eye," i.e., in the
brain. By assuming higher dimensions of space, we can
assimilate this fact to Realism ; but we have no need to
take so much trouble.

This being true for the ordinary Universe, that all sense-

1 The Bride of Corinth, Goethe.
' Gargoyles, vol. iii, p. 97.

324 THE STAR IN THE WEST

impressions are dependent on changes in the brain, we
must include illusions, which are after all sense-impressions
as much as "realities" are in the class of "phenomena
dependent on brain changes. "

Magical phenomena, however, come under a special sub-
class, since they are willed, and their cause is the series of
"real" phenomena called the operations of ceremonial
Magic.

But can any of the effects described in this our book
Goetia be obtained, and if so, can you give a rational
explanation of the circumstances? Say you so?

I can and will.

The spirits of the Goetia are portions of the human
brain. '

Their seals therefore represent (Mr. Spencer's projected
cube) methods of stimulating or regulating those particular
spots (through the eye).

The names of God are vibrations calculated to establish:

(a) General control of the brain (Establishment of func-
tions relative to the subtle world).

(b) Control over the brain in detail. (Rank or type of the
Spirit.)

(c) Control of one special portion. (Name of the Spirit. )

' Carlyle also partially grasps this idea in " Sartor Resartus "
when he writes :

" Witchcraft and all manner of Spectre-work, and Demon-
ology, we have nownamed Madness, and Diseases of the Nerves.
Seldom reflecting that still the new question comes upon us :
What is Madness, what are Nerves? Ever, as before, does
Madness remain a mysterious-terrific, altogether infernal boil-
ing-up of the Nether Chaotic Deep, through this fair-painted
Vision of Creation, which swims thereon, which we name the
Real. Was Luther's Picture of the Devil less a Reality, whether
it were formed within the bodily eye, or without it? In every
the wisest Soul lies a whole world of internal Madness, an
authentic Demon-Empire; out of which, indeed, his world of
Wisdom has been creatively built together, and now rests there,
as on its dark foundations does a habitable flowery Earth-
rind." — Sartor Resartus.

THE NEW WINE 325

I trust that the explanation will enable many students
who have hitherto, by a puerile objectivity in their view of
the question, obtained no results, to succeed; that the
apology may impress upon our scornful men of science
that the study of the bacillus, should give place to that of
the baculum, the little to the great — how great, one only
realises when one identifies the wand with the Mahalingam,
up which Brahma flew at the rate of 84,000 yojanas a second
for 84,000 mahakalpas, down which Vishnu flew at the rate
of 84,000 crores of yojanas a second for 84,000 crores of
mahakalpas — yet neither reached an end.^

This not only carries out the philosophy of Fichte,
but also that of Paracelsus when he said, there is
"nothing in heaven or earth which does not exist in
man." In fact this " one pointedness " is the crown-
ing- glory of Crowleyanity. In the East it is arrived
at by meditation, " the absolute restraint of the mind
to the contemplation of a single object, whether gross,
fine, or altogether spiritual " " in the West by cere-
monial magic.

Now true magical ceremonial is entirely directed to attain
this end, and forms a magnificent gymnasium for those who
are not already finished mental athletes. By act, word, and
thought, both in quantity and quality, the one object of the
ceremony is being constantly indicated. Every fumigation,
purification, banishing, invocation, evocation, is chiefly a
reminder of a single purpose, until the supreme moment
arrives, and every fibre of the body, every force-channel of
the mind, is strained, and in one overwhelming rush of the
Will in the direction desired. Such is the real purport of all
the apparently fantastic directions of Solomon, Abramelin,
and other sages of repute. When a man has evoked and
mastered such forces as Taphtatharath, Belial, Amaimon,
and the great powers of the elements, then he may safely

The Sword of Song, vol. ii, pp. 203-205.
Berashith, vol. ii, p. 242.

326 THE STAR IN THE WEST

be permitted to begin to try to stop thinking. For needless
to say, the universe, including the thinker, exists only by
virtue of the thinker's thought' (Berkeley, Hume, etc.).

"These are real, these illusions: I am of them,
false or frail. "^ And they cannot be overthrown even
by travellers in Morocco who administer to possessed
Moors Seidlitz powders, first giving the alkali, and
then the acid, the patients firmly believing that in the
effervescence consequent to the evolution of gas, the
evil spirit has been dislodged from their interior. For
if they firmly believe the spirit was dislodged, there
can not be the slightest doubt on this point, the spirit
being a temporary part of the "brain," as all other
" ideas " must be from the idea of " constipation " —
which Seidlitz powders will also remove — to that of
Heaven and Hell,' which Swedenborg also dislodges.

At last we have arrived at the close of a difficult
yet intensely interesting journey. Crowleyanity has
led us through more marvels than Dante ever bore
witness to in the " Paradiso " and the " Inferno." His
may have been a Divine Comedy, but here before us
has been unrolled the vast drama of a Sublime
Tragedy : " All arguments are arguments in a circle,"
and there is a home to which we all one day shall have
to return, to the celestial home of crowning glory.
Some spur and spare not, others linger, and others
dawdle in the by-ways and lanes of existence, yet the
most tardy will one day catch up with the fastest and
a time will come when the tortoise will be one with
the hare. All is one, either a mass of impressions

' Berashith, vol. ii, p. 242.
■^ Epilogue, vol. ii, p. 283.
' We are ourselves both Heaven and Hel (Omar KhayyAm),

THE NEW WINE 327

(Locke, Hume), or a mass of consciousness (Berkeley
and Fichte), all is unity, controversy is verbal, dispute
the mere beating of the winds with a tattered fan.
Religion is bankrupt, philosophy is bankrupt, science
is bankrupt, none will be discharged, we must fend
for ourselves. . . . Hark !

We are the poets! We are the children of wood and
stream, of mist and mountain, of sun and wind ! We adore
the moon and the stars, and go into the London streets at
midnight seeking Their kisses as our birthright. We are
the Greeks — and God grant ye all, my brothers, to be as
happy in your loves ! and to us the rites of Eleusis should
open the door of Heaven, and we shall enter and see God
face to face.

Under the stars I go forth, my brothers, and drink of
that lustral dew : I will return, my brothers, when I have
seen God face to face, and read within those eternal eyes
the secret that shall make you free.

Then will I choose you and test you and instruct you in
the Mysteries of Eleusis, oh ye brave hearts, and cool eyes,
and trembling lips ! I will put a live coal upon your lips,
and flowers upon your eyes, and a sword in your hearts,
and ye also shall see God face to face.

Thus shall we give back its youth to the world, for like
tongues of triple flame we shall brood upon the Great
Deep — Hail unto the Lords of the Groves of Eleusis ! '

That which was to be said hereon is spoken. Amen
without lie, Amen and Amen of Amen.

^ Eleusis, vol. iii, pp. 229, 230.

CHISWICK PRESS : CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND Ctt
TOOKS COURT, CHANCBRY LANE, LONDON.

Cornell University Library
PR 6005.R88Z8 1907

The star In the West; a critical essay up

3 1924 013 603 455

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